For Women’s History Month, let’s consider an oddly sexist chapter in our local past. As this blog has pointed out before, our state and community have not always been so progressive and forward-thinking as we may like to think. In this particular chapter, the St. Paul City Council had passed Ordinance No. 8604 back in 1945*, which prohibited women (except licensees, wives, or managers if the licensee was serving in the military) from working as bartenders. (One can only speculate as to the council’s motives, but V-E Day had been declared only three days earlier.) Clara Anderson had worked as a bartender at the Frederic Hotel in St. Paul for nine years, but was barred from continuing due to this ordinance. Ramsey District Court Judge Carlton McNally denied her request for a temporary injunction to delay operation of the ordinance, which Ms. Anderson claimed was unconstitutionally discriminatory. In the resulting case of Anderson v. City of St. Paul et al., the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of the ordinance in a tight 4-3 decision. The Court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court had previously held that selling intoxicating liquor for beverage purposes was not a right protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. But it also applied the standard Fourteenth Amendment equal protection litmus test for discrimination, holding that the council need only meet the standard of having a “rational basis” in making its gender-based distinction, and that it had so met this need.
This case illustrates an earlier interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and its equal protection clause where gender is concerned. The U.S. Supreme Court wouldn’t establish a heightened scrutiny standard against gender discrimination until Craig v. Boren, wherein the Court struck down an Oklahoma statute allowing 18 year-old women to purchase 3.2 beer, but not 18 year-old men. Offending Ordinance No. 8604 has since been stricken from the books, for St. Paul Ordinance Sec. 183.01 now declares that “…[t]he public policy of Saint Paul is to foster equal opportunity for all to obtain employment, education, real property, public accommodations, public services, contract and franchise without regard to their race, creed, religion, sex, sexual or affectional orientation, color, national origin, ancestry, familial status, age, disability, marital status or status with regard to public assistance, and strictly in accord with their individual merits as human beings.”
Attorney Don Lewis
The American Bar Association has designated “The Fourteenth Amendment: Transforming American Democracy” as this year’s Law Day theme. At this time we are pleased to announce that our own Law Day CLE event will take place on May 4 at 3:00 PM here in the Court House in partnership with the Ramsey County Bar Association (RCBA). We are extra-pleased to announce that Minneapolis attorney Don Lewis will speak on Equal Protection of the Laws: The Journey from Jim Crow to Gay Marriage. Mr. Lewis is no stranger to the Second Judicial District, having grown up in St. Paul and recently serving as a special prosecutor for the Ramsey County Attorney’s office. Visit the RCBA website for more information, then mark your calendars for this engaging event!
*Updated May 2020: the St. Paul City Council amended the St. Paul Legislative Code in June of 1970 and removed the provision that prohibited women from working as bartenders. For more information about Clara Anderson’s case, see the article written by Judge John Guthmann, Clara Anderson v. City of St. Paul: A Woman’s Fight to Save Her Job in the Face of Discrimination in the Spring 2020 issue of Ramsey County History Magazine.
