
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 4, 1993                   TAG: 9310040061
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

WOMEN'S ISSUES DOMINATE SUPREME COURT OPENS SESSION

The Supreme Court, characteristically a bit behind the curve, is about to have its own Year of the Woman.

The new docket is dominated by cases on sexual harassment and discrimination that come before the court at a historic moment. When the term begins today, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second female justice ever, will take her seat at the bench with Sandra Day O'Connor, the first.

That so many women's cases are before the court is largely coincidental. In most of the cases, lower courts had arrived at different conclusions in their interpretation of statutes, causing the justices to intervene. But it nonetheless ups the ante to have such an array before a new justice who, as a former advocate, made her name in the 1970s by persuading the court to let women have the same benefits as men.

"It's not just that there will be another woman on the bench," said Lynn Hecht Schafran, a lawyer with the National Organization for Women Legal Defense and Education Fund, "but one that is very knowledgeable about the law in these areas."

O'Connor has been a ready vote for women trying to break down barriers of discrimination, but is not identified with strong advocacy of women's rights.

For the first time since 1986, when the court ruled sexual harassment illegal under federal job discrimination law, the justices could clarify how a worker proves she was subject to the requisite "hostile working environment." The dispute began when a Nashville rental manager in a truck leasing company sued her boss for conduct that included comments about her being "a dumb--- woman" and a joke about negotiating her raise at the Holiday Inn.

Separately, the justices will determine whether a major job discrimination law that particularly benefits women covers cases that were pending at the time of its November 1991 enactment. Civil rights advocates and business leaders say thousands of bias lawsuits could be affected by the ruling.

A case involving a paternity dispute will test whether prosecutors may exclude a person from a jury simply because of gender.

by CNB