Lilly Ledbetter, an icon of the fight for equal pay, has died at 86

Lilly Ledbetter, a former Alabama factory manager whose lawsuit against her employer made her an icon of the equal pay movement and led to landmark wage discrimination legislation, has died at 86.

Ledbetter's discovery that she was earning less than her male counterparts for doing the same job at a Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. plant in Alabama led to her lawsuit, which ultimately failed when the Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that she had filed her complaint too late. The court ruled that workers must file lawsuits within six months of first receiving a discriminatory paycheck—in Ledbetter's case, years before she learned about the disparity through an anonymous letter.

Two years later, former President Barack Obama signed into the law the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which gave workers the right to sue within 180 days of receiving each discrimination paycheck, not just the first one.

“Lilly Ledbetter never set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She just wanted to be paid the same as a man for her hard work,” Obama said in a statement Monday. “Lilly did what so many Americans before her have done: setting her sights high for herself and even higher for her children and grandchildren.”