Roberts scoffed at equal pay for equal work

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Tue, 16 Aug 2005 09:25:48 -0700 (PDT)

Roberts scoffed at equal pay for equal work

 

 

 

Roberts scoffed at equal-pay theory

By Joan Biskupic and Toni Locy, USA TODAY

 

 

 

WASHINGTON — As an assistant White House counsel in 1984, John Roberts

scoffed at the notion that men and women should earn equal pay in jobs

of comparable importance, and he belittled three female Republican

members of Congress who promoted that idea to the Reagan administration.

 

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to hold confirmation

hearings on John Roberts' nomination beginning Sept. 6.

Dennis Cook, AP

 

The memo from Roberts, now President Bush's nominee to the U.S.

Supreme Court, was a response to a letter that the three women — one

of whom was Olympia Snowe of Maine, now a U.S. senator — had sent to

the administration. The women had said that the concept of " equal pay

for equal work " had not sufficiently boosted women's wages because

women were not in many of the same fields as men. The three were

promoting the notion of equal pay for different jobs of comparable

value, based on factors such as skills and responsibility. In his memo

to White House counsel Fred Fielding, Roberts said the women's letter

" contends that more is required because women still earn only $0.60

for every $1 earned by men, ignoring the factors that explain that

apparent disparity, such as seniority, the fact that many women

frequently leave the work force for extended periods of time. ... I

honestly find it troubling that three Republican representatives are

so quick to embrace such a radical redistributive concept. Their

slogan may as well be, 'From each according to his ability, to each

according to her gender.' "

 

The Feb. 20, 1984, memo from Roberts was among 5,393 pages of records

released Monday by the National Archives that were from Roberts' work

during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s.

 

The records, which have been stored at the Reagan presidential library

in Simi Valley, Calif., did not include material from Roberts' tenure

as deputy U.S. solicitor general from 1989 to 1993, a period in which

he took part in cases involving abortion rights, school desegregation

and religion in public places. Senate Democrats and the Bush

administration continue to wrangle over the release of those papers.

The administration has withheld the documents, saying that to release

them would breach the attorney-client relationship.

 

Monday's papers reinforced the portrait of Roberts that emerged in

previous releases of documents from his government work two decades

ago, before he went on to a career in private practice and then became

a judge on a U.S. appeals court. The papers show him as a young aide

eager to advance Reagan's conservatism on civil rights, school prayer

and women's rights.

 

Roberts' tone on some women's issues contrasts with that of Sandra Day

O'Connor, the justice whom Roberts would succeed. As an Arizona

legislator, she complained about women's low wages. As the court's

first female justice, she voted for affirmative action and broadly

interpreted federal law protecting girls from bias in school programs.

 

Roberts' memo in the debate over " comparable worth " in wages arose

after a U.S. trial judge in Washington state ruled that federal

anti-discrimination law required equal pay for men and women who held

different jobs that required comparable skills and effort. Reagan

officials were considering whether to urge an appeals court to reverse

the ruling.

 

Snowe — along with Nancy Johnson, who is still a House member from

Connecticut, and Claudine Schneider, who represented Rhode Island —

wanted the ruling to stand and urged the Reagan administration to stay

out of the case. (In the end, the administration did not intervene. An

appeals court reversed the trial judge's decision.)

 

In a statement Monday, Snowe said that she recently had a " productive

conversation " with Roberts " on a range of issues. " She added,

" Hopefully, 21 years later, Judge Roberts possesses an openness with

respect to issues of gender-based wage discrimination. "

 

One of Monday's documents might undercut the image of Roberts put

forward recently by NARAL Pro-Choice America, an abortion rights

group. A TV ad by the group cast Roberts as being sympathetic to

bombers of abortion clinics. The group withdrew the ad last week under

criticism that it was unfair.

 

In February 1986, Roberts drafted a letter for a White House official

to a lawmaker who had raised concerns that Reagan might pardon people

who had been convicted of bombing abortion clinics. " No matter how

lofty or sincerely held the goal, those who resort to violence to

achieve it are criminals, " Roberts wrote, adding that " neither the

cause ... nor the target of their violence will in any way be

considered to mitigate the seriousness of their offense against our laws. "