As the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings on Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito begin, the National Association of Women Lawyers (NAWL) gave Alito a “not qualified” rating. According to NAWL’s release announcing its “not qualified” rating, “[o]n those women’s rights issues that he has addressed, Judge Alito has shown a disinclination to protect or advance women’s rights. Our concern also recognizes that Judge Alito will be replacing Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who has been a decisive vote in a number of cases involving the rights of women and laws that have a special impact on women.”
“This is a profoundly serious juncture on the long march for women’s equality,” said Eleanor Smeal, president of the Feminist Majority, a leader in the women’s rights movement for more than 30 years. “We fought hard for decades to make this country better, fair and more equal for women. The appointment of a reactionary judge like Samuel Alito to Justice O’Connor’s pivotal seat will reverse decades of progress. I don’t want to leave the next generation of women to fight the same battles we had to fight for the past forty years,” said Smeal, who testified in support of President Reagan’s nomination of Justice O’Connor.
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