Washington – Supreme Court nominee John Roberts 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 Reagan to refrain from embracing any form of the 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 in vogue at the time – of directing employers to pay women equally to men for jobs of “comparable worth” – was “staggeringly pernicious” and “anti-capitalist.”
Roberts’ thoughts on what he called “perceived problems” of gender bias are contained in a vast batch of documents released Thursday.
Senators have said they plan to mine his past views on such topics, which could come before the high court, when he begins confirmation hearings the day after Labor Day.
Covering a period from 1982 to 1986 – his tenure as associate counsel to President Reagan – the memos, letters and other writings show that Roberts endorsed a speech attacking “four decades of misguided” Supreme Court decisions on the role of religion in public life, urged the president against saying AIDS could not be transmitted through casual contact until more research was done, and argued that promotions and firings in the workplace should be based entirely on merit, not affirmative-action programs.
In October 1983, Roberts said that he favored creation of a national identity card to prove Americans’ citizenship, even though the White House counsel’s office was officially opposed to the idea. He wrote that such measures were needed in response to the “real threat to our social fabric posed by uncontrolled immigration.”
Senate Democrats also want access to Roberts’ files from his times as the Justice Department’s deputy solicitor general from 1989 to 1993. Bush ad ministration officials have refused.
