Feminist or Foe? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Title VII Sex-Discrimination, and Support for Women’s Rights

Feminist or Foe? Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Title VII

Sex-Discrimination, and Support for Women’s Rights

BARBARA PALMER*

ABSTRACT: At the tenth anniversary of her ap pointment, it seems fitting to analyze what the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court has done in the area of sex discrimination. As a preliminary exploration of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s jurisprudence in this area of consti tutional law, this paper will focus on eight cases brought under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act as amended by th.e 1978 Pregnancy Dis crimination Amendment. Research on women judges, their attitudes about sex-discrimination and their votes suggests that Justice O’Connor would be more sympathetic to the promotion of women’s rights in sex-discrimination claims. A simple bloc analysis of these eight cases seems to confirm this proposition. A substantive analysis of these cases, however, reveals that Justice O’Connor’s support for women’s rights and feminism is, at best, mixed.

Happily, the last half of this century has witnessed a revolution in women’s legal and political status. My chambers window in Washington, D.C. commands a view of a small brick house, the head quarters of the National Women’s Party and the home of suffragist Alice Paul. It serves as a daily reminder to me that less than seventy years ago women had yet to obtain that most basic civil right, the right to vote.

At the tenth anniversary of her appointment, it