Sylvia Roberts (1933-2014) was an American lawyer known for legal work on behalf of patients at the East Louisiana State Hospital’s Forensic Unit, for the National Organization for Women’s (NOW) Legal Defense and Education Fund (LDEF), as an educator and advocate for the legal rights of women in Louisiana, and on the behalf of victims of domestic violence. Roberts is best known for representing Lorena Weeks in Weeks v. Southern Bell, the first legal victory in which the National Organization for Women used Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to fight gender-based discrimination.
She served as NOW’s first Southern Regional Director and as president of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (currently Legal Momentum) (1972-1974).
Sylvia Roberts’ lifelong advocacy on behalf of the victims of mental illness, workplace discrimination, the legal system, and domestic abuse was exemplified through her tireless pursuit of legal justice and efforts to educate the public.
Early life and education
Sylvia Roberts was born on January 6, 1933, in Bryan, Texas, and grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana.
Roberts attended the University of California, Los Angeles and graduated in 1953. Although she had never seen a woman lawyer, Roberts was determined to become one. While she was accepted into the law school at UCLA, she returned to her home state of Louisiana to attend law school at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge (where she was one of three women in the school) and Tulane University Law School. Roberts left law school at Louisiana State University due to hostility from her male classmates and professors. She chose Tulane Law School to finish her studies because there were more women and she "was not an object of curiosity there." She graduated from Tulane University Law School in 1956. After graduation from Tulane University Law School, Roberts spent one year at the Sorbonne in Paris studying comparative law where she hoped for a more gender-inclusive experience compared to the law practices of Louisiana.
Early career
Upon returning to Louisiana, Roberts clerked for the chief justice of the state supreme court because the career placement officer she consulted was opposed to women lawyers and there were not any law firms in New Orleans accepting female applicants. She then worked for the law firm of H. Alva Brumfield in New Orleans as a secretary and, later, as a lawyer in their Baton Rouge office These early years of Roberts’ legal career were spent representing plaintiffs in insurance and malpractice lawsuits.
Work with the East Louisiana State Hospital Forensic Unit
In 1964, Sylvia began working with patients at the East Louisiana State Hospital’s Forensic Unit. She effectively used the legal system to fight for better hospital facilities, to improve patient care, and to increase the availability of mental health treatment in Louisiana. She also served as chairman of the subcommittee on mental illness of the Louisiana Governor’s Commission on Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice.
NOW and NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund
In 1966, Roberts joined the newly founded National Organization for Women, although she was not a founding member. She was quickly recruited to serve on the NOW Legal Committee where she was integral to NOW's litigation strategy. Marguerite Rawait and the other lawyers of the NOW Legal Committee, focused on sex discrimination cases in hopes of utilizing Title VII of the Civil Rights Act to strike down the protective labor laws which were preventing women from equal employment and payment and create a legal precedent. In 1967 the lawsuit of Lorena Weeks against the Southern Bell Telephone Company provided a venue through which to test this strategy.
Weeks v. Southern Bell
In 1969, with the support of the NOW Legal Committee, Roberts argued the first sex discrimination case appealed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964: Weeks v. Southern Bell. The decision in this case stated that employers could not refuse to consider a woman for a job unless “all or substantially all women” could be proven incapable of performing the tasks required. In addition to the judgment, the judge ordered that Weeks be promoted to switchman and Weeks received $31,000 in back pay and commuting expenses. The ruling was a huge victory for women and for NOW, proving NOW's investment in arguing sex discrimination lawsuits could have a positive result.