Thursday, October 22, 2009

Equal: Mechelle Vinson heading to high court

19. To the Supreme Court

Barry began to solicit help, including from MacKinnon, who was unemployed at the time. Lawyers at the Sex Discrimination Clinic at the Georgetown University Law Center drew in amici, But it appeared she would not get the support of the EEOC, which was afraid that if Vinson lost, the EEOC would lose its guidelines.

The chair of the EEOC was Clarence Thomas, who would join the Supreme Court in 1991.Thomas opposed the sexual harassment guidelines and the Vinson case, saying that it would be impossible to eliminate personal slights and sexual advances. A lawyer working for the EEOC, Anita Hill, whose strained “relationship” with Thomas would become well known, urged him to accept the guidelines even though talking to him about it make her feel as though she had been dipped in a vat of scalding water. Eventually the EEOC voted 3-2 to oppose Vinson.

The government's brief aligned closely with Bork's dissent. MacKinnon drafted Vinson's brief, hampered by the fact that they could only pay for bits of a transcript at a time. Barry appeared for the first moot courts unprepared and replacing her with Professor Laurence Tribe was discussed. But Barry pulled herself together and stayed on the case.

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