Scalia Says Constitution Does Not Prevent Gender Discrimination

[ensho]

http://thinkprogress.org/2010/09/20/scalia-women/


Speaking to a law school audience in San Francisco last Friday, Justice Antonin Scalia expressed some strange views about the Constitution and gender equality:

Scalia also said he doesn’t believe the Constitution bans sex discrimination.

The 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War in 1868, guarantees due process and equal protection and in recent years has been interpreted by courts to prohibit sex discrimination as well as racial discrimination.

But Scalia said he believes the amendment doesn’t apply to discrimination against women because that use of the measure was not intended in 1868.

-snip-

What is new, however, is that Scalia may have significantly more support on the present Supreme Court than he did in 1996. Justice Thomas, who has even gone so far as to call for a return to the days when federal child labor laws and laws banning whites-only lunch counters were considered unconstitutional, would almost certainly be moved by Scalia’s claim that women’s rights under the Constitution must remain exactly the same as they were in 1868. Similarly, as a young lawyer in President Reagan’s Justice Department, Chief Justice Roberts penned an article claiming that only race discrimination — and not discrimination on the basis of other categories such as gender — is limited by the Constitution.

Justice Alito does not appear to have weighed in on the question of how much protection the Constitution gives women against gender discrimination, but as a lower court judge, he penned a dissent which would have “eviscerated” the law banning race and gender discrimination in the workplace. Alito was also the author of the Supreme Court’s unforgivable decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, which cut off many women’s ability to seek equal pay for equal work until President Obama signed a law overturning the decision.

In other words, the Supreme Court could be just one vote away from turning Scalia’s vision into a reality.
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our Supreme Court will never be healthy until he is gone (and his disgusting wife)

[sarge43]

1. So the 19th Amendment is invalid? n/t

[theoldman]

2. We need people like Scalia.

Scalia keeps us aware of what the Devil looks like.

[ensho]

4. he is just religiously insane - he believes in devils

I don't

[izquierdista]

3. In a just world....

This thug would be playing his games of Simon Says with himself.

[Bitwit1234]

5. Listening to his interpretations means

that the Constitution is anything he wants it to be. He said that it is all in reading the meaning of the ones who wrote the Constitution and he knows how to do that. Nothing egotistic about him is there.

[Arugula Latte]

6. Seriously, isn't it about time that that asshole just dropped dead?

[LiberalAndProud]

7. ummm... What does it take to impeach?

misogynistic slimy ideologue

[vaberella]

8. Thanks Scalia for saying this. Now we can get some detailed legislation that forces equal pay.

His disgusting analysis opens the door for more specific language and allows a definitive law in place for equal pay for equal work. Then we won't have judges in the Supreme Court who could argue against the rights of women.

[Whisp]

9. maybe Scalia should have an 1868 plumbing system in his house then.

how preposterous, what he said.
!

[ampad]

10. He interprets the constitution

Like many of the right wing Christians interpret the bible. Pick and choose, twist words to fit a certain agenda. What is scary is that he has the power to make his own interpretations the law.

[4lbs]

11. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 covers a lot of this, but not all.

http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=97&page=transcript

It prevents gender discrimination at public places, and places of employment.

However, and this is a big one, it creates the loophole where a PRIVATE establishment (i.e. a country club, a private golf course, a men's club, a men's gym) can indeed exclude female customers/patrons, as long as it doesn't receive any federal or state monies.

Furthermore, the CRA of 1964 doesn't cover equal pay either, which is why the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act had to be passed.

[Yavin4]

12. You Forgot The Rest of His Quote

"Now get back in that kitchen and make me some pie!"