Current Action Alert ( sign up to receive AFA of PA Action Alerts
Education
Issues
Homosexual Agenda
Roberts
Donated Help to Gay Rights Case
In 1996, activists won a landmark anti-bias ruling with the aid of the
high court nominee.
Richard A. Serrano, The Los Angeles Times, August 4, 2005
WASHINGTON - Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the
scenes for gay rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them
persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting
people from discrimination because of their sexual orientation.
Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts
helped represent the gay rights activists as part of his law firm's pro
bono work. He did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before
the high court, but he was instrumental in reviewing filings and
preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers intimately
involved in the case.
Gay rights activists at the time described the court's 6-3 ruling as the
movement's most important legal victory. The dissenting justices were
those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative
ideology: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and
Clarence Thomas.
Roberts' work on behalf of gay rights 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 stressed,
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 Roberts' help on the case, Walter A. Smith Jr.,
then head of the pro bono department at Hogan & Hartson, said
Roberts didn't hesitate. "He said, 'Let's do it.' And it's
illustrative of his open-mindedness, his fair-mindedness. He did a
brilliant job."
Roberts did not mention his work on the 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.
Smith said the omission was probably just an oversight because Roberts
was not the chief litigator in Romer vs. Evans, which struck down a
voter-approved 1992 Colorado initiative that would have allowed
employers and landlords to exclude gays from jobs and housing.
"John probably didn't recall [the case] because he didn't play as
large a role in it as he did in others," Smith said Wednesday.
"I'm sure John has a record somewhere of every case he ever argued,
and Romer he did not argue. So he probably would have remembered it
less."
Jean Dubofsky, lead lawyer for the gay rights activists and a former
Colorado Supreme Court justice, said that when she came to Washington to
prepare for the U.S. Supreme Court presentation, she immediately was
referred to Roberts.
"Everybody said Roberts was one of the people I should talk
to," Dubofsky said. "He has a better idea on how to make an
effective argument to a court that is pretty conservative and hasn't
been very receptive to gay rights."
She said he gave her advice in two areas that were "absolutely
crucial."
"He said you have to be able to count and know where your votes are
coming from. And the other was that you absolutely have to be on top of
why and where and how the state court had ruled in this case,"
Dubofsky said.
She said Roberts served on a moot court panel as she prepared for oral
arguments, with Roberts taking the role of a Scalia-like justice to
pepper her with tough questions.
When Dubofsky appeared before the justices, Scalia did indeed demand
specific legal citations from the lower-court ruling. "I had it
right there at my fingertips," she said.
"John Roberts * was just terrifically helpful in meeting with me
and spending some time on the issue," she said. "He seemed to
be very fair-minded and very astute."
Dubofsky said Roberts helped her form the argument that the initiative
violated the "equal protections" clause of the Constitution.
The case was argued before the Supreme Court in October 1995, and the
ruling was handed down the following May. Suzanne B. Goldberg, a staff
lawyer for New York-based Lambda, a legal services group for gays and
lesbians, called it the "single most important positive ruling in
the history of the gay rights movement."
In the blistering dissent, Scalia, joined by Rehnquist and Thomas, said
"Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual
conduct." Scalia added that the majority opinion had "no
foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to."
The case was one of several Roberts worked on pro bono at Hogan &
Hartson, a prominent Washington law firm that expects partners to
volunteer time in community service.
In his answers to the Senate questionnaire, Roberts talked generally
about his volunteer work.
"My pro bono legal activities were not restricted to providing
services for the disadvantaged," he wrote, explaining that he often
donated behind-the-scenes time and expertise on projects.
He said he participated in a program sponsored by the National Assn. of
Attorneys General to "help prepare representatives of state and
local governments to argue before the Supreme Court." He said that
several times a year he reviewed briefs in "selected cases"
and met with state or local attorneys in moot court before their Supreme
Court appearances.
He also said he had worked with high school and college students and
teachers "studying the legal system and the Supreme Court."
And he said he had "actively participated on a pro bono basis in
efforts to achieve legal reform."
Roberts personally handled two pro bono cases.
In the first, Roberts was asked by Rehnquist - for whom he previously
had been a clerk - to represent a man who had been convicted of Medicaid
fraud, sentenced to prison and fined $5,000. The federal government also
had filed a civil suit in the case and won a $130,000 judgment.
In U.S. vs. Halper, Roberts' first appearance before the high court, he
argued that adding a civil penalty to a criminal one was double jeopardy
and therefore unconstitutional.
In 1989, the court agreed unanimously. Eight years later the court
reversed itself, again 9 to 0.
The second case was a Washington, D.C., welfare case that involved about
1,000 residents who lost benefits when the city cut programs amid a
budget crisis.
Roberts, representing homeless people and others who could not work
because of illness or injuries, argued before an appellate court that
the city had erred in not first formally notifying recipients about the
change in benefits.
The court ruled against him in December 1995 in one of Roberts' few
appellate losses.
According to others who worked on the case, Roberts asked the court to
reconsider, then appealed to the Supreme Court. The high court declined
to hear the case.
"Mr. Roberts was essentially the principal counsel," recalled
R. Scott McNeilly, a staff lawyer with the Washington Legal Clinic for
the Homeless. "He was very involved."
When the welfare recipients lost in the courts, McNeilly said, most
"were put out on the streets. They lost the money they were using
to take the bus to see a social worker or money they were paying to a
friend to sleep on his couch."
In the questionnaire, Roberts described them as "the neediest
people" in Washington.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-roberts4aug04,0,1823941.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Copyright 2002-2008 American Family Association of PA