President Barack Obama swept into office with his mantra of “Change you can believe in.” Since the day of his inauguration, change has been happening with the signing of a succession of laws that affect the lives of women, men and children nationwide. However, the emphasis on Health Care Reform, the economic recession and the on-going wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have overshadowed these important new laws and the changes they have brought. Here’s an update on what has been accomplished.

• January 29, 2009. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act gave workers more time to sue employers for wage discrimination. Lilly Ledbetter had worked as a supervisor at a Goodyear Tire plant in Gadsen, Alabama, for l9 years – the only woman supervisor at the company. As she neared retirement, she received an anonymous letter listing the salaries of the men who

held similar jobs as supervisors. She discovered, to her dismay, that the lowest paid man with far less seniority was being paid $4,286 a month while she was earning $3,727. Ledbetter filed a complaint with the Equal Opportunity Commission. Goodyear argued that she filed too late since Title VII requires employees to

file within l80 days of “the alleged unlawful employment practice.” Since salaries and raises were confidential at Goodyear as at many companies, Ledbetter had no way of knowing the facts.

A jury trial ensued that gave her a stunning victory: $233,776 in back wages and more than $3 million in punitive damages. Goodyear appealed the jury decision and the case eventually reached the Supreme Court, which decided on May 29,2007 in favor of Goodyear by a 5-4 vote. Sandra Day O’Connor was no longer on the High Court. Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito were the new appointees. The immediate reaction in both houses of Congress was to pass Fair Pay legislation. On July 31, 2007, The House of Representatives passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act by a vote of 225 to 199 with little Republican support and a veto threat from President George W. Bush. In the Senate, the Fair Pay Restoration Act fell 4 votes short of 60 needed to reach the floor on April 23,2008. Nine months later, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law, she was there to receive his thanks, a stirring introduction by Michele Obama and the applause of the people gathered at the White House.

• February 4, 2009. S-Chip, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, was renewed for 4 1/2 years and expanded to cover 4 million more children. President Bush had vetoed the expansion twice in 2007. There were supporters of the program in both parties who were concerned with the number of children without coverage. Opponents cited the costs and the proposal to tax revenue from tobacco products to fund the increased coverage. The new law, covering 11 million children, makes families with incomes up to 300 percent of the poverty level – $63,600 for a family of four – eligible. The previous cutoff was 200 percent of the poverty level – $42,400 for that same family.

• March 30, 2009. The Omnibus Public Lands Management Act designated millions of acres of federal land as wilderness. The struggle over public lands has pitted oil and natural gas developers against environmental activists for decades. Areas close to the nation’s protected canyons in Arizona had been auctioned off at the close of 2008 to private companies. The U.S. Geological Survey had estimated that 1.2 million acres of Wyoming range land held large deposits of natural gas and oil. The new law declared this area off limits to oil and natural gas development. Critics said this was counter productive to reaching national energy independence.

• June 22, 2009. The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act gave the FDA power to regulate tobacco products. Since the l990’s, the Food and Drug Administration and Congressional allies have been seeking authority to regulate tobacco. The sight of the tobacco industry executives raising their right hands to swear before Congress that tobacco is not addictive is etched in the national memory. Republican opponents to the FDA regulating tobacco have argued that tobacco is neither a food nor a drug and it is not an illegal substance. However, the majority in Congress set aside these objections and gave the FDA the authority to regulate tobacco products to make them safer. The testimony over the years has included evidence that tobacco companies have large scale promotions to attract teenage smokers with specific flavors and other inducements in their advertising. This law was a major breakthrough for consumer protection and health care advocates who have been warning of the deadly connection of smoking to lung and throat cancer for decades.

• October 28, 2009. The Matthew Shepard & James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act expanded federal hate-crimes laws to cover gender and sexual orientation. It is eleven years since the slaying of the two men and it took 14 votes in Congress to pass the law. Matthew Shepard was a 21-year-old gay man beaten and left to die, tied to a split-rail fence on the Wyoming range land. James Byrd was a 49- year-old black man beaten by three white men, chained by his ankles to a pick up truck and dragged along the roads to his death in Texas. The law gives the Justice Department the power to investigate and prosecute, and to pre-empt local police when too little has been done about the hate-crime.

The $680 billion Defense Authorization Bill signed into law in late October, 2009, cut back or cancelled billions of dollars in weapons systems that were either redundant, outdated, performing poorly or exceeding the military’s requests. Production of the Air Force’s F-22 stealth fighter jets has been under attack for years. It was designed for combat against the former Soviet Union and has not been used in Iraq or Afghanistan. President Bush had tried to end the program and failed after Lockheed Martin put plants in dozens of states to secure votes of members of Congress. F-22 jets will be cancelled after l87 aircraft in production are completed. The VH-71 presidential helicopters were cut as were the C-l7 transport planes since the military planners say they have enough to meet current and future needs. The airborne laser, a favorite of missile defense advocates, will not be produced since it is not suited to fighting the counterinsurgencies of today’s warfare. President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates made a strong case for ending all these programs. The president also ended the no-bid contract system that was a part of defense weapons procurement. He signed bi-partisan legislation to improve how weapons are bought. The sweetheart deals that gave billions to Halliburton and its subsidiaries in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will become a thing of the past.

The laws enacted since January 20 will bring change into different important areas of our lives. That change may be viewed as positive or negative depending on where one is on the political spectrum. Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, reflects the conservative view that, “The left knows what it wants. It’s been trying to get it for some time, and this is its moment.” Rob Nabors, the White House deputy budget director, sees the changes as progressive when he calls the new laws “a very, very quiet but important victory.”

Joyce S. Anderson is the author of “Courage in High Heels,” “Flaw in the Tapestry,” “If Winter Comes” and “The Mermaids Singing.” She can be reached at JSAWrite@aol.com.