Thursday, August 04, 2005

Supreme Court Nominee Worked on Pro-Gay Rights Case

(Link) Bush nominee John Roberts did the job for free, too! Add that to his previous role as Peppermint Patty in a college play and... Well, we're still not convinced he's totally on our side, but there's hope.
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1 comment:

LNewsEditor said...

JIC Post:
From LA Times
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee John Roberts worked behind the scenes for a coalition of gay-rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them convince the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people against discrimination because of their sexual orientation.

Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay activists as part of his law firm's pro bono work. While he did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before the Supreme Court, he was instrumental in reviewing the filings and preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers intimately involved in the case.

The coalition won its case, 6-3, in what gay activists described at the time as the movement's most important legal victory. The three dissenting justices were those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative ideology — Chief Justice William Rehn- quist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Roberts' role working on behalf of gay activists, whose cause is anathema to many conservatives, appears to illustrate his allegiance to the credo of the legal profession: to zealously represent the interests of the client, whoever it might be.

There is no other record of Roberts being involved in gay-rights cases that would suggest his position on such issues. He has emphasized, however, that a client's views are not necessarily shared by the lawyer who argues on his or her behalf.

The lawyer who asked for his help on the case, Walter Smith, then-head of the pro bono department at Hogan & Hartson, said Roberts didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Let's do it.' "

Roberts did not mention his work on the gay-rights case in his 67-page response to a Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire released Tuesday. The committee asked for "specific instances" in which he had performed pro bono work, how he had fulfilled those responsibilities and the amount of time he had devoted to them.

But Smith said Wednesday that was probably just an oversight because Roberts was not the chief litigator in Romer v. Evans, which struck down a voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.

8/04/2005 10:30 AM

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