House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) announced today that the chamber will vote Friday on legislation making it easier for workers to pursue payment-discrimination claims.

The Lilly Ledbetter Act is named for a former Goodyear Tire supervisor in Alabama who, for years, was paid less than other company supervisors, even some with less experience. Ledbetter won a lawsuit charging discrimination, but the Supreme Court reversed the lower court’s decision in a May 2007 split decision. The high court argued that Ledbetter should have filed her complaint the first time she was discriminated against (though how would she have known?), and the statute of limitations had expired.

As Robert Pear reported Monday in The New York Times, the Supreme Court decision has had sweeping ramifications:

Since then, courts around the country have gone far beyond the facts of that case and cited it as a reason for rejecting lawsuits claiming discrimination based on race, sex, age and disability.

In some cases, after initially ruling for employees, judges have reversed themselves and ruled in favor of employers. The judges said they had to switch because of the Supreme Court decision.

Under the House bill, the time window for filing discrimination claims would open anew each time a paycheck is issued. Hoyer explained the rationale today: “Every week that somebody is paid and it is in a discriminatory fashion,” he said, “that is a new discriminatory event so that any statute of limitation would run from the last pay period, not from the first pay period, which seems to us to be very fair.”

The House passed the bill in July 2007, largely along party lines, but Senate Republicans blocked passage last April. GOP Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe of Maine, as well as Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, joined all Senate Democrats in voting for the bill, giving supporters hope that it will be successful this year.

As The New York Times wrote in an editorial today, Republicans “should consider now whether hostility to civil rights and pay equity for women is really the image they want to project for their party after the losses it suffered in November.”