Goodbye to a Good Man

Donald Lay, a federal judge who “rigorously defended the rights of women, Native Americans and convicts,” passed away on Sunday.

Judge Lay was a member of the Eighth Circuit from 1966 until last year and was its chief judge from 1980 to 1982. He wrote more than 2,000 opinions and concurrences but also several notable dissents that were eventually upheld by the Supreme Court. One of his decisions, in a case involving the harassment of women at a mine in northern Minnesota, was the subject of the 2005 movie “North Country.”

In an interview yesterday, Judge Robert W. Pratt, chief judge of the Southern District of Iowa, part of the Eighth Circuit, said Judge Lay was “among the last of the unapologetic liberals who believed deeply in the Warren Court revolution and saw the federal courts as the protector of civil and equal rights.” He was also, Judge Pratt said, “a bulwark against efforts to repeal or reform habeas corpus,” the right of prisoners to challenge their convictions.

Thomas Boyd, a former law clerk for Judge Lay, said that Judge Lay had protected the rights “of even the most reviled members of our society” and that “one of the dissents he was most proud of was in Morrissey v. Brewer.”

In that 1971 case, the Eighth Circuit denied a habeas corpus petition by two prisoners, holding that their rights had not been violated when the Iowa State Parole Board revoked their paroles without hearings. Judge Lay’s dissent was upheld by the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Warren E. Burger writing that the “liberty” of a parolee “is valuable and must be seen as within the protection of the 14th Amendment.”

The Supreme Court also upheld a dissent by Judge Lay in a 1983 case, Jaycees v. McClure. The Jaycees, a nonprofit organization that encouraged young men to engage in civic activities, had challenged a Minnesota order that they accept women as members. A federal district court upheld the order, but the Eighth Circuit reversed that ruling. In his dissent, Judge Lay said excluding women was based on an outdated rationale that “relegated women to a status inferior to that of men.” A year later, the Supreme Court agreed.

He is survived by his wife, five daughters, and 10 grandchildren. He did a whole lot of good in his 80 years, and improved the lives of people across the country — many of whom may never know who he was, but will enjoy greater equality and expanded liberties because of his work.

Perhaps Judge Lay’s most influential opinion came in Jenson v. Eveleth Taconite Co., which stemmed from a 1997 class-action suit brought by women working at a company mine. The women said they had been subjected to obscenities, stalking and other forms of sexual harassment for more than 20 years.

In his decision, Judge Lay wrote: “It should be obvious that the callous pattern and practice of sexual harassment engaged in by Eveleth Mines inevitably destroyed the self-esteem of the working women exposed to it. The humiliation and degradation suffered by these women is irreparable.”

The ruling was hailed as precedent-setting in a book by Clara Bingham and Laura Leedy Gansler, “Class Action: The Story of Lois Jenson and the Landmark Case That Changed Sexual Harassment Law” (Doubleday, 2002).

“Jenson v. Eveleth did not eradicate sexual harassment in the workplace,” the authors said. “But it made corporate America take real note of it for the first time, and established once and for all that women who are subjected to a hostile work environment need never stand alone again.”

Cheers to him.

Thanks to Dad for the link.