Via WaPoRoberts Resisted Women’s Rights

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women’s rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called “the purported gender gap” and, at one point, questioning “whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good.”

In internal memos, Roberts urged President Ronald Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the proposed Equal Rights Amendment pending in Congress; he concluded that some state initiatives to curb workplace discrimination against women relied on legal tools that were “highly objectionable”; and he said that a controversial legal theory then in vogue — of directing employers to pay women the same as men for jobs of “comparable worth” — was “staggeringly pernicious” and “anti-capitalist.”

First, regarding the women becoming lawyers bit: please. Stuart Buck rightly notes:

It could hardly be any clearer that Roberts wasn’t denigrating women, he wasn’t saying that women belong in the home, or anything of the sort: He was making a lawyer joke. If it needs to be spelled out, he was suggesting that lawyers are so disputatious and bad for society that we shouldn’t be encouraging more people (of any sort) to become lawyers. The context happened to involve homemakers, but the joke would work just as well if it had been truck drivers or trash collectors or any other sort of occupation (”Some might question whether encouraging janitors to become lawyers contributes to the common good”).

Of course, given that Roberts is a lawyer himself, he was merely showing a self-deprecating sense of humor. And for this he is to be pilloried 20 years later? Good heavens.

Indeed. This is especially clear when the line is given in context:

His remark on whether homemakers should become lawyers came in 1985 in reply to a suggestion from Linda Chavez, then the White House’s director of public liaison. Chavez had proposed entering her deputy, Linda Arey, in a contest sponsored by the Clairol shampoo company to honor women who had changed their lives after age 30. Arey had been a schoolteacher who decided to change careers and went to law school.

In a July 31, 1985, memo, Roberts noted that, as an assistant dean at the University of Richmond law school before she joined the Reagan administration, Arey had “encouraged many former homemakers to enter law school and become lawyers.” Roberts said in his memo that he saw no legal objection to her taking part in the Clairol contest. Then he added a personal aside: “Some might question whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good, but I suppose that is for the judges to decide.”

It would be further enlightening to know his relationship with the person to whom the memo was written to fully ascertain the significance of the remark and the likely tone.

In regards to the ERA: it is possible to be in favor of equal treatment of women and be opposed to the ERA, seeing it not as a corrective to gender discrimination, but rather a vehicle for a lawsuit-o-rama. And, for what it is worth, I would maintain that the 14th Amendment covers the gender issue in the contemporary context.

Of the more ridiculous charges (and this one surfaced from some other documents as well) is this “comparable worth” business, along with other serious policy questions:

On other matters involving women’s rights, Roberts in 1983 criticized a report that lauded strides by states to combat sex discrimination in the workplace, that had been endorsed by then-Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Dole. In a Jan. 17 memo to his boss, White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, Roberts wrote that “many of the reported proposals and efforts are themselves highly objectionable.” Roberts singled out three ideas for particular criticism: what he characterized as a California requirement that employers take into account affirmative action, in addition to seniority, when laying off workers; another California proposal to require women to be paid the same as men for state jobs considered of comparable worth; and a Florida proposal to charge women lower tuition than men at state colleges because their earning power was less.

1. There are reasonable arguments contra affirmative action and it is hardly surprising that a conservative would hold them.

2. Comparable worth is a highly controversial notion that is difficult to initiate, violates principles of capitalism, and encourages lawsuits. And for those who may be unclear: we are not here talking of equal pay for equal work. I wholly support the idea, as does the law, tht people in the same position should be paid the same regardless of gender. However, the notion that because Job A is male-dominated, and Job B is female-dominated and since both are somehow roughly in the same strata of the given business, that there should be public policy requirements to equalize pay is ludicrous. Even if one finds its a worthwhile policy goal, any fair-minded person would have to acknowledge that it is a controversial concept, and not one likely to be supported by a conservative.

3. Basing college tuition on gender is likewise controversial and would, I should think, run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause.

Really, where is the evidence that Roberts is “anti-woman” as the story not-so-subtly declares?

Further, the writings in question are from a man in is twenties–that he is somewhat flip on occasion is hardly surprising, is it?

(I would especially note that bloggers in particular are calling the kettle black, so to speak, if they criticize on that count).