‘70 Rehnquist Memo Saw ERA as Threat to Family

A 1970 memo written by Justice William H. Rehnquist, nominated to be the nation’s 16th chief justice, said the equal rights amendment would tear apart the American family and “turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock,” it was disclosed today.

Rehnquist, whose nomination goes before the Senate for debate Wednesday, told the White House in the memo that the ERA is “a grave threat to American family life,” and would wipe out the “distinction” between men and women.

Rehnquist, whose nomination goes before the Senate on Wednesday, wrote the memo while an assistant attorney general in the Nixon Administration. It was released by civil rights organizations.

Rehnquist wrote to then-White House aide Leonard Garment on May 4, 1970, that the proposed amendment is unneeded because rights of women are already protected by the Constitution.

‘Legally Obligated’

National Public Radio’s legal affairs reporter Nina Tottenberg reported today that the Rehnquist memo said, “If a husband decides to move from Boston to Chicago, the wife is legally obligated to accompany him.”

But the memo went on to say that the ERA “would leave both parties with a power to decide this question, with a result which could indeed . . . turn holy wedlock into holy deadlock.”

The memo also said passage of the ERA would result in a “sure redirection in the importance of the family unit, with eventual elimination of that unit by no means improbable.”

‘The Only Distinction’

Posing hypothetical questions to American women, Rehnquist wrote:

“Do a majority of women wish to be deprived of special protection in hazardous occupations . . . to see their preferential treatment under the Social Security Act taken away . . . to be eligible for the military draft?

“Put in broader terms, do a majority of women really wish to have the only distinction between themselves and men be the preservation of separate restrooms in public buildings?”

The ERA had been ratified by 35 of 38 states needed for passage to become a constitutional amendment. But in 1981, a federal judge in Idaho ruled that Congress had violated the Constitution by extending the ratification deadline to June, 1982. Five states voted later to rescind their resolutions.