Nominee Roberts, in '84, called equal pay for women 'radical'

[Judi Lynn]

Nominee Roberts, in '84, called equal pay for women 'radical'

BY TOM BRUNE
WASHINGTON BUREAU

August 16, 2005

WASHINGTON - As a Reagan White House attorney in 1984, John G. Roberts criticized three Republican congresswomen for supporting the "radical" idea of "comparable worth" to create pay equality between men and women.

Among the women was Olympia Snowe, now a senator from Maine, and key moderate member of the Senate, who will be voting on Roberts' nomination to the Supreme Court.

"I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept," he wrote. "Their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

The criticism, a parody of a Marxist slogan, came in a Feb. 20, 1984, memo that Roberts wrote to his boss, White House counsel Fred Fielding.
(snip/...)

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/ny-uscort164386084aug16,0,4059927.story?coll=ny-nationalnews-headlines

[alittlelark]

1. WOW..... that was a really creepy quote

"I honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept," he wrote. "Their slogan may as well be 'From each according to his ability, to each according to her gender.' "

He just gets creepier and creepier....

Nominating this one...

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Um...wow.

So he's a reactionary. Or was, 20 years ago. Kind of stunning to see someone criticising the idea of equal pay for equal work, in this day and age, much less calling it a "radical redistributive concept".

[Starfury]

3. This is considered to be a strict constructionist?

Among the issues addressed by Roberts in memos released yesterday was school prayer. In a Nov. 21, 1985, memo to Fielding, Roberts urged the support of a constitutional amendment to permit "silent prayer" in public schools.

The amendment would have reversed a Supreme Court decision overturning an Alabama law requiring a one-minute silent prayer each day.

Total hypocrite.

[Yupster]

15. I don't get it?

What do you find hypocritical?

A strict constructionist would believe that the way to change the Constitution would be through the amendment process which is what he was advocating.

Prayer in school aendment? Sounds like a bad idea to me, but I don't see why it would be hypocritical.

[tk2kewl]

17. guess he never heard of the 1st or 14th Amendments

:shrug:

probably never heard of the the 4th Amendment either

[On the Road]

18. A Typical Right-Winger

would believe there is no need for an amendment. Roberts seems to respect the 1st amendment ruling and believes an amendment would be needed to allow silent prayer.

[cornermouse]

4. According to Sirota's link, our "representatives" are already

throwing in the towel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/15/AR2005081501433.html

Roberts Unlikely To Face Big Fight

Democrats have decided that unless there is an unexpected development in the weeks ahead, they will not launch a major fight to block the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., according to legislators, Senate aides and party strategists.

In a series of interviews in recent days, more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides who are intimately involved in deliberations about strategy said that they see no evidence that most Democratic senators are prepared to expend political capital in what is widely seen as a futile effort to derail the nomination.

"No one's planning all-out warfare," said a Senate Democratic aide closely involved in caucus strategy on Roberts. For now, the aide said, Democratic strategy is to make it clear Roberts is subject to fair scrutiny while avoiding a pointless conflagration that could backfire on the party. "We're going to come out of this looking dignified and will show we took the constitutional process seriously," the aide said.

"This was a smart political choice from the White House," said one prominent Democratic lawmaker, who like several others interviewed for this article requested anonymity because they were departing from the Democrats' public position. "I don't think people see a close vote here."

[booksenkatz]

6. Remember, cornermouse

We're allowed to keep our right to filibuster, as long as we don't use it. So there will be no filibuster against Roberts, because if we did, we'd lose our right to filibuster.
:crazy:

[whalerider55]

5. radical...

dude

whalerider

[Triana]

7. And the DEMOCRATS aren't expected to fight this pig?

WHY?

Goddamnit this is the BIGGEST issue (besides SS and Iraq) to face these spineless pantywaists and they're going to SIT THERE AND NOT FIGHT THE NOMINATION OF THIS GUY?

:wtf:

NOW. THIS is why I'm a registered INDEPENDENT.

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEENOUGH!

:mad:

DEMOCRATS (most of them, anyway) cannot represent me. They WILL NOT. They REFUSE! Don't get me wrong, I voted for Kerry and have NEVER voted for anything but Democrats but I just cannot register with a party that WILL NOT SUPPORT MY BEST INTEREST.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggh!

[Lori Price CLG]

24. Yeah, Joe LieberBush is going to stand up and fight the nomination...

*****NOT!!!*****

[Daphne08]

8. WHAT?

Oh, don't even get me started! :mad:

[leesa]

9. What a sick MoFo. Thanks! I didn't realize I had no abilities...does his

lawyer wife approve of this crap? I'm sure she makes an equitable wage and they both seem to love riches dearly.

[MaineDem]

10. 1984 memo by Roberts was critical of (Senator Olympia) Snowe

(Interesting because she's publicly undecided and could hold a swing vote for his confirmation.)

WASHINGTON — Supreme Court nominee John Roberts wrote a memo as a White House aide two decades ago dismissing concerns as "troubling" and "radical" from then-Rep. Olympia Snowe about a court case dealing with paying women and men equally for comparable work. Snowe has since become a U.S. senator and a key undecided vote on Roberts' nomination. In 1984, she and two other female Republican lawmakers wrote to former President Reagan's deputy chief of staff, Michael Deaver, asking the administration to stay out of the case.

"We are deeply concerned about reports that the Justice Department is preparing a legal challenge to the recent federal court decision in the state of Washington," the lawmakers wrote on Jan. 26, 1984. "We strongly urge the administration to refrain from involvement in this case."

The lawmakers cited a "wage gap" in which women earned 60 cents for every $1 earned by men as justification for a landmark Washington state decision that ordered back pay and raises for women who had been paid less than men in comparable jobs.

http://pressherald.mainetoday.com/news/state/050816roberts.shtml

[Ripley]

11. Take a poll right here at DU...

You will find that half the people here agree with Roberts on this issue.

[kiraboo]

12. THAT I don't believe! n/t

[Ripley]

13. You must be new.

Read a little more.

[smoogatz]

14. The issue was "comparable worth," not equal pay.

It's not quite the same thing. I doubt there are many DUers who wouldn't support equal pay for equal work--but the concept behind "comparable worth" was a bit more complicated.

[Yupster]

21. It's been 20 years since "Comparable Worth" was an issue

I think most people either forgot about it, or never heard of it.

It was a big deal while I was in college.

The idea of it was that there are some jobs that are heavily female and others heavily male.

The comparable worth movement attempted to find female and male jobs which required similar amounts of education, skill, time, etc. Then the conclusion was that those two jobs should pay the same.

The example used in college was a public school teacher (female) and a civil engineer (male). They required similar education, and time, and were both important in their worth to the nation. Therefore, teachers should have their pay raised to the level of civil engineers as a civil rights gender equity issue.

Doug Flynn, who was a part-time infielder for the Mets came under some criticism as one student claimed his job as part-time waiter was as important to the nation and required as much education as the poor utility infielder's, and therefore part-time waiters should make $ 300,000 per year. The reply was that maybe part-time baseball players should make $ 5,000 per year.

Anyway, at the time I was making about $ 3 an hour as a lifeguard part-time.

From my memory hole, that was the comparable worth movement.

[smoogatz]

28. That's about how I recall it, too.

It was an interesting theory, but would've been a nightmare to implement.

[realFedUp]

16. When will Al Franken wake up?

This guy may look harmless...but look beneath the
"judicial temperment".

[Spinzonner]

19. I think Roberts is a perfect Supreme Court candidate

for the 19th century.

But just barely; he'd probably be more at home in the 18th.

[Czolgosz]

20. In addition to opposing racial and gender equality, Roberts is an opponent

the First Amendment and Congress's traditional role in regulating improper conduct:

John Roberts was a law clerk for William Rehnquist, associate at Ronald Reagan’s White House Counsel’s Office during the Iran-Contra scandal, chief Political Deputy Solicitor General under Ken Starr during the first Bush administration, and legal adviser to Jeb and George Bush in Bush v. Palm Beach County Canvassing Board and Bush v. Gore. Although Roberts is the protégé of Rehnquist and Starr, he holds even more radical views on several issues. Specifically, Roberts is a right-wing activist with respect to (1) restricting the First Amendment, (2) ignoring seven decades of law establishing Congress’s power to regulate improper conduct tolerated by individual states.

Roberts Disrespects the First Amendment

As the Political Deputy Solicitor General, Roberts played a key role in defining the first Bush administration’s legal policies when intervening in cases pending before the Supreme Court. Opposition to all facets of the First Amendment was a unifying theme of Roberts’s work as Political Deputy Solicitor General.

With regard to free speech, Roberts filed a brief in favor of restricting speech in United States v. Eichman (the Supreme Court, including ultra-right wing Anton Scalia, rejected Roberts’s call for judicial activism limiting free speech).

With regard to the separation of church and state, Roberts filed a brief in favor of disregarding the First Amendment’s barriers in Lee v. Weisman (the Supreme Court rejected Roberts’s call for judicial activism allowing the intermingling of church and state).

With regard to the right of privacy, Roberts filed briefs in favor of eliminating women’s reproductive self-determination in Rust v. Sullivan and Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic (the Supreme Court rejected Roberts’s calls to overrule Roe v. Wade).

Roberts’s radically narrow view of the First Amendment is extreme even when compared against the most right-wing Justices of the current Supreme Court. The prospect of an activist judge this far to the right of Scalia with regard to the First Amendment should deeply concern everyone with a love of the Constitution.

Roberts Would Turn Back the Clock 70 Years on Congressional Power

Many of Roberts’s critics have focused on the anti-environmental aspect of his dissenting opinion in Rancho Viejo v. Norton, a case where he disagreed with the rest of the (very conservative) DC Circuit Court because he would have rejected the use of the Endangered Species Act to protect a threatened habitat. On its face, this dissenting opinion shows a lack of respect for the environment, but the reasoning behind this opinion shows a more troubling lack of respect for Congress’s regulatory authority.

Roberts would have rejected the use of the Endangered Species Act in the Rancho Viejo case based on an extremist view that Congress lacks constitutional authority to regulate anything that does not directly affect interstate commerce.

70 years ago, back before the New Deal, there was a vigorous debate in the courts about the scope of the Constitution’s “commerce clause” and Congress’s authority to regulate actions in the various states. The New Deal legislation and the many court decisions which approved that legislation resolved the debate about the scope of the commerce clause. Since then, this broad interpretation of Congress’s authority to regulate actions in the states has been used to lift the country out of depression, to pass labor protections, racial desegregation, civil rights, and consumer safety laws among other important and well-established legal standards.

Roberts’s dissent in the Rancho Viejo case confirms that he would turn the clock back 70 years to the narrow interpretation of the commerce clause that was rejected decades ago and by thousands of legal decisions. Imagine an America where Congress could not impose child work standards or environmental regulations or racial equality unless the parties being regulated sought to violate the standards while actually crossing state lines for business purposes. That is the America Roberts envisions.

Roberts has denied having ever been a member of the Federalist Society, a group of right-wing lawyers devoted to an extremist view of the Constitution that would deny the federal government power to regulate corporate misconduct on the national level. Contrary to Roberts’s statements, he is listed in the Federalist Society's 1997-1998 leadership Directory as serving on its Steering Committee.

[Demeter]

22. Equal Pay Is STILL Radical

which says a lot about Americans.

[daleo]

26. Women wearing shoes, and not being pregnant is starting to seem radical

To far too many conservatives these days.

[Baconfoot]

27. You left out women learning to read. NT

[Baconfoot]

23. *sarcasm* What's the big deal? Midterms are coming up! */sarcasm*NT

[usregimechange]

25. Join me in sending this to Snowe.

[Bassic]

29. This guy is going to fuck up the supreme court for a good long time

[northzax]

30. no, see you all have it wrong

Roberts grew up surfing, and we all know that 'radical' is a GOOD word, for surfers, "That's like totally radical, dude" see? Hey, if it's good enough for Spicoli, it's good enough for you. right?

[UrbScotty]

31. "to each according to her gender"

Look who's talking.