Gender Equality and the Constitution: The Unfinished Business of Reform (Zoom)

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Linda J. Wharton will discuss the renewed push for ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment and explain why expanding protection for gender equality is needed now more than ever given the conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court.  The talk will highlight areas in which an Equal Rights Amendment may be especially effective and meaningful. Wharton, a professor at Stockton University, was featured in the recent documentary film on the ERA, Equal Means Equal.  She is the former Managing Attorney of the Women’s Law Project in Philadelphia where she served as lead co-counsel before the United States Supreme Court in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, in which the Court reaffirmed the core principles of Roe v. Wade. Her scholarly work on the positive impact of equal rights amendments in state constitutions has been widely cited.

Linda J. Wharton is a Professor of Political Science at Stockton University, where she teaches Constitutional Law, Women and the Law, Civil Liberties, Advanced Constitutional Litigation, and Gender and Political Action.  Professor Wharton’s scholarly research and writing focuses on issues of state and federal constitutional law with a special concentration in the law of gender discrimination.  Her publications include: “Preserving Roe v. Wade…When You Win Only Half the Loaf, 24 Stanford Law & Policy Review, 143 (2013), “Reflections on Planned Parenthood v. Casey: Preserving Roe’s Core,” (with Susan Frietsche and Kathryn Kolbert) 18 Yale Journal of Law & Feminism 317 (Winter 2007), and “State Equal Rights Amendments Revisited: Evaluating their Effectiveness in Advancing Protection against Sex Discrimination,”36 Rutgers Law Journal 1201 (2006).  She serves as Stockton’s Pre-Law Advisor, coordinates the University’s annual Constitution Day events and participates in its Political Engagement Project, a joint initiative of Stockton and the AASCU’s American Democracy Project

From 1989 until 1997, she served as the Managing Attorney of the Women’s Law Project, a public interest law firm located in Philadelphia, where she specialized in litigation and law reform relating to gender discrimination. She served as lead co-counsel in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a challenge to Pennsylvania’s restrictive abortion law, which was decided by the United States Supreme Court in 1992.  She also serves as a consultant on issues of gender equity in education and constitutional protection for women’s rights and was featured in the recent documentary on the Equal Rights Amendment, Equal Means Equal.  She currently serves on the ERA Coalition’s Legal Task Force.

Linda Wharton graduated from Bryn Mawr College with a B.A. in 1977 and from Rutgers Law School with a J.D. in 1981.  She was a law clerk to the Hon. Dolores K. Sloviter, former chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, and an associate with the Dechert law firm in Philadelphia.  She is the former Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Women’s History Project. She has taught courses in sex discrimination law at the University of Pennsylvania School of Law and Rutgers School of Law. 

The "Women and the Right to Vote: Then and Now" series is funded by the New Jersey Council for the Humanities and the Friends of the East Brunswick Library.

Our community partners are the East Brunswick Human Relations Council, East Brunswick Woman's Club, Milltown Public Library, the Monroe Public Library, Piscataway Public Library, South River Public Library, and the Spotswood Public Library. Additional funding is provided by the East Brunswick Friends of the Library.