Will Justice O'Connor Remember Her Own Affirmative Action Help?

by Lou DeMatteis

Today, Justice O'Connor is the pivotal vote in the most important test of affirmative action in recent history, in a case that charges the University of Michigan with violating the constitution with its admission policies. Reports show O'Connor took an active role questioning in the courtroom. As she ponders the case out of the public eye in the weeks to come, I wonder how her own experience resonates. I know she had her own face-off with discrimination, and got a helping hand when it was needed.

Born in 1930, Sandra Day left her family's Lazy B ranch where she grew up on the Arizona-New Mexico border and went to Stanford University as a 16-year-old. Even though she graduated third in her class at Stanford Law School, the future Supreme Court Justice could not easily find a job -- not as a lawyer, anyway.

It was l952, and men outnumbered women in the law school 30 to 1. Few if any law firms would hire a woman then, O'Connor remarked during a visit to the San Mateo County Courthouse here in 1999. In an interview with one firm, she said she was told, "We've never hired a woman and frankly I don't think we ever will."

Then O'Connor heard that the district attorney in San Mateo County, south of San Francisco, had hired a woman lawyer. That district attorney was my father, Louis B. Dematteis.

Louis Bartholomew Dematteis, Louie to his friends, was born the first son of Italian immigrant parents who had come to California to escape the poverty of their small rural villages in Northern Italy. Born and raised in Redwood City, Louis knew what it was to overcome adversity -- and discrimination.

Italian was his first language. His father Francesco didn't really want young Louie to go to school, at least not for too long; he wanted him to work. So my dad did both at once. Like Sandra Day, he graduated from high school at age 16. Then he took courses at night and passed the California Bar Exam in 1932, seven days after his 21st birthday. He was the youngest lawyer in the state.

It was 20 years later that a somewhat frustrated Sandra Day sent Louis Dematteis a job application and four-page cover letter. She offered to work for free, since she had not yet received the results of the bar exam. My dad gave her the job and she even got paid.

In an interview with Charlie Rose in February, 2002, after the publication of her autobiography "Lazy B," Justice O'Connor said of those days: "I asked the District Attorney of San Mateo County if he would consider me for a job. And it was a wonderful man. He was Louis Dematteis and he'd been elected as district attorney in San Mateo County ... there was this beautiful old courthouse with a fabulous dome on it with stained glass, it was just wonderful, it still stands today, and his offices were in that building, and he had once had a woman on his staff, a lawyer, and I thought, well, if he could have one, he could have another."

It wasn't an accident that my dad gave Sandra Day the job. He was an Italian-American who grew up in the local Little Italy at a time when Italians were not easily accepted into good schools, good careers, and could be the butt of jokes. He had experienced the prejudice of his time. Along the way, he had learned not to judge someone on whether they were from this or that ethnic or racial group, male or female, rich or poor, but to judge them on who they were or could be deep inside.

He also knew that life often wasn't fair, and that sometimes people needed a helping hand, a little boost, a break to get them going down the road to what they could become.

So, Sandra Day O'Connor was on her way. She didn't stay long at the San Mateo County District Attorney's office, resigning in 1954 to accompany her husband on military assignment in Germany. The rest, pretty much, is history.

Dad never left home. He became a Superior Court Judge and stayed on the bench until retirement, turning down offers of state jobs in Sacramento and the urging of friends and supporters to run for U.S. Congress. He died of natural causes in 1995 at his home with his family around him, a little over a mile away from the house he was born in. He is gone, but I'd like to think his vision lives on.

As we await the June decision of the full court on the Michigan case, I wonder if the experience of being extended a helping hand from an Italian-American in this small town will cross Justice O'Connor's mind.