Oct. 10--It's been a big year for Lilly Ledbetter.

The 70-year-old grandmother from Alabama is touring on behalf of U.S. Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, and she delivered a speech at August's Democratic National Convention.

But Ledbetter says she never aspired to see her picture on the evening news.

"This is not what I wanted to be doing," Ledbetter said Thursday during a lunchtime stop in Johnstown.

"But after I considered what had been done to me, it was not right."

Ledbetter said she has become a reluctant advocate for the women's equal-pay movement. On Thursday, she told her story to a group of women gathered at Obama's Johnstown campaign office.

In 1998, Ledbetter was a working mother of two with 19 years' service at a Goodyear plant in Gadsden, Ala. But her world changed when she received an anonymous note saying she was earning substantially less money than fellow managers who were men.

She immediately sued and won a multimillion-dollar judgment, which she says quickly was reduced to $360,000 by a judge.

It was a short-lived victory. An appeals court overturned the verdict, and that decision later was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2007 decision.

That decision was based not on whether Ledbetter had been discriminated against, but rather on the justices' interpretation of the statute of limitations for such a case: The court said she would have had to file a suit within 180 days of Goodyear's first alleged offense, meaning Ledbetter's first paycheck.

Since Ledbetter had spent nearly two decades at the plant, that deadline was long past. And Ledbetter now has no further legal recourse.

"I will never get a dime," Ledbetter said.

So she has taken to the campaign trail for Obama, who supported what has been dubbed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. The bill would ease the statute-of-limitations restrictions for wage-discrimination suits.

The bill passed the U.S. House but did not make it through the Senate in April.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, the GOP presidential nominee, was not present to vote on the bill.

But McCain has said he would have opposed it, arguing that the measure could open the door for numerous, frivolous lawsuits against businesses.

McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, expressed a similar view last month in an interview with CBS News.

"(The Ledbetter act) would have turned into a boon for trial lawyers," Palin said, adding that she believes existing laws addressing the equal-pay issue should be enforced.

"We won't stand for anything but that," Palin told the network. "We won't stand for any discrimination in the workplace."

But Ledbetter doesn't buy that argument, saying there was no rash of lawsuits in the years before the Supreme Court reinterpreted the law.

"This country needs a change -- not more of the same," she said.

Ledbetter said her nine-year legal battle continues to take a toll on her and her family. But she vowed to continue speaking out.

"If I can make a difference for daughters and granddaughters of the future, that's what I want," she said.

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