Sally Reed - Boise, ID
Posted by: 
silverquill
N 43° 35.333 W 116° 12.894
11T E 563377 N 4826512
Sally Reed blazed a trail nationally for women's right with a 1971 Supreme Court victory, Reed vs Reed. This memorial is at the site of her former residence where a store, Idaho Angler, is now located.
Waymark Code: WM2M3B
Location: Idaho, United States
Date Posted: 11/18/2007
Views: 99
SALLY REED LIVED HERE
Idaho and the Nation owes a lot to Sally Reed, who, though an unlikely heroine, blazed a trail nationally for women's rights with a 1971 Supreme Court victory.
Sally lived at this site in a two-story frame home from 1935 until 1999. After her divorce in 1958, from Cecil R. Reed. [sic] Sally made a modest living for herself and her son Richard Lynn (Skip) Reed, by caring for sick and disabled veterans in her own home.
Skip's death in 1967 led to competing petitions to administer his small estate. Idaho law at the time said in such cases "the male must be preferred over the female . . . "
Though she never sought the spotlight and didn't realize the widespread significance of what she was doing, Sally's basic instincts for right and wrong moved her to challenge this discriminatory law all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court -- with the help of "Attorneys Robert McLaughlin in the probate court and Allen Derr in all courts thereafter, together with briefing by now U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, than a Rutgers University Law Professor and American Civil Liberties Union volunteer.
Two Boise Attorneys, Derr, for Sally and Charles S. Stout for Cecil, presented the sol [sic] arguments for their respective clients in the U.S. Supreme Court.
On November 22, 1971, Chief Justice Warren Burger issued a unanimous decision which for the first time in history, declared a state law unconstitutional because it discriminated agains women in violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment . . (Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 71 S. Ct. 252, 30 Ed. 225)
The case is featured as one of the "DAYS" in a book DAYS OF DESTINY co-edited by Pulitzer Prize winner James M. McPherson, in which "America's Greatest Historians Examine Thirty-One Uncelebrated Days That Changed The Course of History." The Society of American Historians, Agincourt Press.