In a year when a woman is running for president, you might think the U.S. Senate would be sensitive to correcting an injustice to female workers perpetrated last year by the Supreme Court.

Last Wednesday, the Senate failed to send the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (HR 2831), which passed the House, to a full debate and vote. It required 60 votes to advance the bill but got only 56, thanks to GOP opposition. To his credit, Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, a sponsor of the Senate bill, was among six Republicans who voted with the Democrats.

Most Republicans should have been ashamed but instead some complained about politics. Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada delayed the vote so Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could return and make a statement. The certain Republican nominee, Sen. John McCain, stayed in Louisiana where he was campaigning but indicated he would have voted with the 42 who opposed a vote.

If this was political theater, it deserved to be, because it was a clarifying issue. A 5-4 Supreme Court vote last year did Lilly Ledbetter a grave injustice, and did it based on a technicality that it was not in her power to avoid.

Ms. Ledbetter, who worked from 1979 until 1998 at a Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. plant in Gadsden, Ala., was the unknowing victim of years of gender-based pay discrimination. But the Supreme Court insisted she had to file her claim within 180 days of an act of discrimination that began years before, which she did not know about at the time and which cumulatively built up to affect all her later pay checks.

The reason the Republicans opposed closing the loophole allowing discrimination was that it would lead to more lawsuits. But Congress should be on the side of the people -- not those who would deny them their rights.

If women are facing discrimination on the basis of gender, they should have a legal remedy. Fortunately, those who care about fairness have another remedy: Remember in November.