WASHINGTON (ABP) — John Roberts, President Bush's nominee to the Supreme
Court, donated legal work on behalf of gay-rights groups that helped them win a landmark 1996 case before that panel,
according to the Los Angeles Times.
While he was a private attorney, Roberts did several different kinds of legal work to help prepare the attorneys
arguing on the side of gay-rights groups in Romer vs. Evans. That decision overturned a Colorado law that struck
down all local gay-rights provisions. Justices in the 6-3 majority said the law violated gay and lesbian Coloradoans'
constitutional right to equal protection.
Romer vs. Evans was widely considered the most important legal victory for the gay-rights movement up to that
point. It provided some of the legal basis for the Supreme Court's landmark 2003 Lawrence vs. Texas decision,
which invalidated laws that banned gay sex nationwide.
According to the Times, Roberts helped prepare the attorneys who argued for the gay Coloradoans who protested
the law. He contributed help on legal briefs, and held moot-court sessions to ready the attorneys for oral arguments
before the high court.
At the time, Roberts was an attorney with the Washington firm Hogan & Hartson. He had successfully argued several
cases before the justices, and the firm expected its lawyers to perform pro bono, or charity, work for various
causes.
The lawyer who headed the firm's pro bono department at the time said Roberts did not hesitate when asked to help on
the case. “He said, 'Let's do it.' And it's illustrative of his open-mindedness, his fair-mindedness,” Walter
Smith told the newspaper. “He did a brilliant job.”
The lead attorney for the case, who worked with Roberts, told the paper that people directed her toward the nominee
on the case. “Everybody said Roberts was one of the people I should talk to,” said Jean Dubofsky, who was a former
Colorado Supreme Court justice. “He has a better idea on how to make an effective argument to a court that is pretty
conservative and hasn't been very receptive to gay rights.”
Ironically, the three justices who dissented from the majority in Romer vs. Evans are the ones to whom social
conservatives have favorably compared Roberts. In a minority opinion, authored by Justice Antonin Scalia and joined by
Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Scalia excoriated the very legal reasoning that
Roberts reportedly recommended.
“Coloradans are entitled to be hostile toward homosexual conduct.” Scalia wrote, adding that the majority opinion
had “no foundation in American constitutional law, and barely pretends to.”