TV ad against roberts sparks furor [View All]

[dajoki]

The court heard arguments in the case, Bray v. Alexandria Women's Health Clinic, in October 1991 and then again the next October before finally ruling in January 1993, by a vote of 6 to 3, that the law did not apply. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, whom Mr. Roberts has been nominated to succeed, voted in dissent. The decision prompted Congressional passage of a new federal law to protect the clinics.

Mr. Roberts participated in both arguments, presenting the administration's view that the law in question, the Ku Klux Klan Act, did not apply to the clinic protests. In earlier cases, the Supreme Court had parsed the law, which prohibits conspiracies to deprive "any person or class of persons of the equal protection of the laws," as requiring proof that a conspiracy was motivated by a "class-based, invidiously discriminatory animus."

In this case, two lower federal courts had found that the clinic protests met that test because they were a form of discrimination against women. But Mr. Roberts argued that the demonstrators were not singling out women for discriminatory treatment but rather were trying to "prohibit the practice of abortion altogether." He told the court that even though only women could become pregnant or seek abortions, it was "wrong as a matter of law and logic" to regard opposition to abortion as the equivalent of discrimination against women.
NYT 8/11/05 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/11/politics/11abort.final.html?th&emc=th