It should come as no surprise that George W. Bush would nominate Samuel Alito to the U.S. Supreme Court on Halloween. This nomination is frightening.Over the next few weeks, much will be made of Alito's dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey1, a dissent which the Supreme Court overruled 6-32. One of the many reasons this case will be in the news is that the Supreme Court's majority opinion, opposing Judge Alito, was written by Sandra Day O'Connor.
The real reason this case is important is not so much for this specific case by itself. The real reason is that Judge Alito's view on this case forms part of a pattern of misogyny that permeates his judicial thinking.
In this case, Judge Alito ignored the statistical data and the expert testimony that showed that women, especially battered women, would be at risk of further abuse if forced to inform their husbands that they were going to have an abortion. Instead, he chose to focus on the fact that the majority of women getting abortions do not fall into this category.
In other words, Judge Alito chose to ignore the plight of battered and abused women. And this is just one case. There are more.
In Chittester v. Department of Cmty. and Econ. Dev.3, Judge Alito claimed that a state's refusal to provide family and medical leave does not discriminate against women. This, even though the Supreme Court already ruled on the issue, with Chief Justice Rehnquist writing that the Family and Medical Leave Act remedied a long history of discrimination against women in the workforce (Nev. Dep't of Human Res. v. Hibbs4).
In Sheridan v. E.I. Dupont de Nemours & Co.5, Judge Alito wrote that if an employer facing a discrimination suit is able to come up with some reasonable-sounding, nondiscriminatory excuse for its behavior, the judge in the case should dismiss the suit. This summary dismissal, according to Alito, can happen even if the plaintiff can show that the excuse is highly doubtful. The Supreme Court shot down that theory in Reeves v. Sanderson Plumbing Prods., Inc.6.
The next case is far more difficult. It deals with the court rulings that children in public schools are not under the protection of the state, even though their freedom of action is limited (i.e., they are required to be in school). In D.R. v. Middle Bucks Area Vocational Technical Sch.7, Judge Alito ruled that girls who are sexually abused in the school cannot sue the state for failing to attempt to protect them.
This case may differ from the others mentioned above, because Judge Alito was not the dissenter, but ruled with the majority. Still, it continues to demonstrate Judge Alito's hatred of women and his professional, if not personal, desire to relegate women to second-class status.
Judge Alito's nomination is a trick, not a treat. His confirmation means women will have to fight all over again for the rights it took them over a century to gain.
Citations:
1 947 F.2d 682 (3d Cir. 1991)
2 505 U.S. 833, 897 (1992)
3 226 F.3d 223, 228 (3d Cir. 2000)
4 538 U.S. 721 (1993)
5 100 F.3d 1061, 1078 (3d Cir. 1996)
6 530 U.S. 133 (2000)
7 972 F.2d 1364 (3d Cir. 1992)
Copyright 2005, Dan Jacoby
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