The Other 99%

A setback for women's rights

Military veterans have been given a leg up at getting government jobs since the Civil War. To reward sacrifice and ease the transition into civilian life, the Federal Government as well as almost every state gives veterans some sort of preference over other public job seekers. In Massachusetts, the preference is permanent and absolute: veterans have a lifetime right to be hired before anyone else anytime they pass the civil service test.

Like 99.2% of the women in Massachusetts, Helen Feeney is not a veteran. As a state employee, she was repeatedly turned down for better government jobs that went to ex-servicemen with lower scores on civil service exams. Deciding that further competition was futile, she brought a sex discrimination suit in 1975, charging Massachusetts with violating her constitutional rights. She won the first round: a lower court decided that the state's law favoring vets had a "devastating impact" on civil service job opportunities for women.

But last week the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 against Feeney and for absolute hiring preferences for veterans. The Massachusetts law works to "the overwhelming advantage of men," acknowledged the court. And Justice Potter Stewart's majority opinion allowed that veterans' preferences are "an awkward --and many argue, unfair--exception to the widely shared view that merit and merit alone should prevail in the employment policies of the Government." But just showing that the law had a harmful effect on women was not enough, wrote Stewart. The question was whether the state law was designed to discriminate against women. The court found that it was not, noting that male nonveterans suffered too.

That distinction did not make much sense to two dissenters, Thurgood Marshall and William Brennan. They argued that since Massachusetts could have easily foreseen the unfair impact on women, it should have looked for a less drastic way to help vets, like adding points to their civil service scores.

Though the armed services are now about 7% female, a 2% Government quota on women kept the military virtually all male for years. Said Eleanor Smeal, president of the National Organization for Women: "We have now been given the double whammy. Women have been told they're not wanted in the armed forces and then that for the rest of their lives, they can be passed over in favor of men who are less qualified for government service."

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