Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 27, 1995 TAG: 9505300048
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALLISON BLAKE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Whether the court will hear the widely anticipated appeal likely will not be known until fall.
And it also won't affect the inaugural class of about 30 at the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership, the state's answer to admitting women to 155-year-old VMI in Lexington.
The women's institute, to be located at private Mary Baldwin College in Staunton, will be paid for by the state and endowed by the private VMI Foundation. Mary Baldwin officials have maintained all along that they will open the program regardless of the legal case.
"As far as we're concerned, [the appeal] has no immediate impact on what we're going to do on a day-to-day basis, as far as running VWIL," said Mary Baldwin spokeswoman Crista Cabe.
Virginia Attorney General Jim Gilmore issued a statement saying the state's women are entitled to their own leadership training.
"I am optimistic that, should the Supreme Court decide to hear the case, it will see no need to disrupt this unique educational opportunity for women," he said.
But backers of the federal position hailed the appeal.
"Happily, the Justice Department hasn't backed down from supporting the Supreme Court's tradition of upholding women's rights," said Kent Willis, executive director of the Virginia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.
The case has become more complicated in recent months, ever since the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond found the women's leadership program to be a constitutional way to provide diversity in education, as the state argued VMI provides, but not discriminate against women. In the course of making that decision, which passed 2-1, the court created a new standard by which women's rights in institutional settings can be measured.
One of VMI's attorneys, Anne Whittemore, said it's unlikely the standard would be applied to cases of individual discrimination, such as the right to vote, and "the majority of your discrimination cases involve individual rights as opposed to institutional" discrimination.
"We don't have very many gender-based institutions in our society," she said.
But the co-president of the National Women's Law Center in Washington, D.C., said the new standard weakens protection for women.
"Had it not been for the government's willingness to pursue this case, we would have had a terrible injustice perpetrated, because the 4th Circuit decision really misreads standards that should apply when we're dealing with government-sponsored discrimination," Marcia Greenberger said.
In its appeal, the Justice Department argues that the women's program is not equal to VMI's military-style program, and that the appeals court's new "separate-but-substantively-comparable standard ... incorrectly incorporates and authorizes sex discrimination."
"As a basis for its decision, the court relied on sex-based generalizations that women are more psychologically and sociologically suited than men to a confidence-building, public service-oriented program, while VMI's rigorous military-style training is more suitable to men," the department argues.
However, Mary Baldwin on Friday announced plans for a program that pre-empts another point in the Justice Department argument: That it doesn't have engineering. Mary Baldwin and the University of Virginia announced a dual-degree bachelor's program in science or math, and a master's degree in engineering from UVa.
by CNB