Camille Olson Quoted in the Minneapolis Star Tribune

The September 10, 2005 issue of the Minneapolis Star Tribune carries an article ("Putting Roberts' opinions to work; Groups eager to hear views on workplace") on Supreme Court Justice nominee John Roberts' views on workplace issues which includes comments from Camille:

"A lot of people are hoping to get to know John Roberts better on Monday [9/12], when Senate confirmation hearings begin on his nomination for chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Some of those people are business and worker-rights advocates who are lobbying hard to have the hearings give considerable time to his views on employment law. That's because employment issues including affirmative action, pay equity and dispute arbitration continue to be shaped by court rulings throughout the country, all the way up to the Supreme Court. So far, the search for clues has taken groups mostly to his brief tenure on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and memos he wrote while a political appointee in the Reagan administration in the early 1980s. The paper trail has shown he more often has sided with employers than employees. That's reflected in his endorsements so far.

"A legal perspective: In fact, equal pay for the same job is the law of the land, but equal pay for a comparable job is not, said Camille Olson, an employment attorney in Chicago and a member of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's labor and employment committee. Olson sees Roberts' precise interpretations as his "diligence in grounding all of his decisions in the law he's being asked to consider," she said. Roberts was involved in 32 employment law cases during his tenure on the D.C. Circuit Court, Olson said. Of those, he ruled in favor of employers 18 times and in favor of employees or labor unions 11 times. The rest were not clear victories either way, she said. "He clearly does not have a liberal bent, or any indication in the cases he has decided that he's likely to expand beyond what is written regarding protections of the various laws," she said. "He is a strict constructionist."