Lede story from the LA Times today. You know where it is. Can't believe this hasn't made the hit parade yet. Boy, are the wing nuts going to go crazy or what?
Roberts Worked on Behalf of Gay Activists
By Richard A. Serrano, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON -- Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. worked behind the scenes for a coalition of gay-rights activists, and his legal expertise helped them persuade the Supreme Court to issue a landmark 1996 ruling protecting people against discrimination because of their sexual orientation.
Then a lawyer specializing in appellate work, the conservative Roberts helped represent the gay activists as part of his law firm's pro bono work. While he did not write the legal briefs or argue the case before the Supreme court, he was instrumental in reviewing the filings and preparing oral arguments, according to several lawyers intimately involved in the case.
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The coalition won its case, 6-3, in what gay activists described at the time as the movement's most important legal victory. The three dissenting justices were those to whom Roberts is frequently likened for their conservative ideology -- Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
And, like Bolton's little 'oops' about not telling the Senate he was being investigated, this little matter was also omitted:
Roberts did not mention his work on the gay-rights 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.
But Smith said Wednesday that 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. "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."