Court to Weigh Gender-Based Jury Exclusion

Keeping people off juries because of their sex promotes outmoded stereotypes and should be as unlawful as jury selection based on race, the Supreme Court was told Tuesday.

“You should not be able to exclude a male or a female simply because of their gender,” argued a lawyer for an Alabama man who says his rights were violated when an all-female jury decided that he fathered a baby out of wedlock.

But a lawyer for the state of Alabama said barring jury selection based on sex “would raise more problems than it could possibly cure.”

“Both men and women sit on juries throughout this country,” said Lois N. Brasfield, assistant Alabama attorney general. Sex discrimination in jury selection is not as pervasive as discrimination based on race, she added.

The Supreme Court banned race-based exclusions of potential jurors in a series of rulings starting in 1986.

John F. Porter III, the lawyer for paternity defendant James E. Bowman, said the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment requires the same ban on jury strikes based on sex.

Sex-based jury decisions often are based on unwarranted stereotypes, Porter said. His argument was supported by the Clinton Administration.

Alabama officials sued Bowman, contending he was the father of Phillip Rhett Bowman Bible, born May 16, 1989. A blood test established a 99.92% probability that Bowman was the boy’s father.

Of 23 women and 10 men in the jury pool for the 1991 trial, lawyers for the state used peremptory, or automatic, challenges to remove nine men and one woman.

Bowman’s lawyers removed the last male potential juror. The jury decided that Bowman was the child’s father, and the judge ordered him to pay child support.

Alabama appeals courts rejected Bowman’s argument that excluding men from the jury violated his equal-protection rights.