Amy J. Gittler Papers, 1972-1984, n.d.
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Administrative/Biographical History
Amy J. (Jo) Gittler was born on July 1, 1951 in Yonkers, New York to Harvey Gittler, later a plant manager at Oberlin College, and Adele Gittler, an editor at the Elyria Chronicle. She attended Simmons College from 1969 to 1971, and transferred to Oberlin College in February of that year. In the summer of 1971 she studied Roman-Dutch comparative law in a course in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, sponsored by Syracuse University College of Law.
While at Oberlin Gittler was a member of the Community Board, the Committee for the Status of Women, and the Student Coordinating Council, and served as a news broadcaster for WOBC, the college radio station. She also served as a counselor in a camp run by the Associated Cardiac Group for Children with Heart-Related Problems, and a camp operated by the Lorain County Association for Retarded Children. Gittler graduated in May of 1972 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. That June she was appointed the first woman admissions officer at Oberlin College from a field of 100 candidates.
Amy Gittler left Oberlin to continue her studies at Northwestern University, where she earned a Doctor of Jurisprudence in 1977. That year she joined the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest. In 1982 Gittler was appointed Executive Director of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, where her practice concentrated in the areas of employment discrimination and the rights of persons with mental and physical disabilities. In 1983, Gittler argued and prevailed before the United States Supreme Court in Arizona Governing Committee v. Norris, a case that held it is unlawful for an employer to pay lower monthly benefits to women than men upon retirement.
In 1991 Gittler was elected to the Oberlin College Board of Trustees by alumni for a six-year term. At the time she was a partner in Brown & Bain, P.A., in Phoenix, Arizona. In 2006 she was named one of the top 500 litigators in the country by Law Dragon. In 2014 she was a Shareholder in the Phoenix office of Jackson Lewis P.C. Gittler managed the Phoenix office from its opening in 2007 to 2012. She has received numerous awards, including the Legislative Service Award, the Human Dignity Award, and the Arizona State University College of Law Distinguished Achievement Award. Her published works include articles in the DePaul Law Review and the American Journal of Psychiatry, and “ADA and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973” in the Arizona Employment Law Handbook (1995).
Sources Consulted
Jackson Lewis P.C. web site at www.jacksonlewis.com/people.php?PeopleID=1259, accessed 5/28/2014.
Student references file, Amy J. Gittler Papers (RG 30/171).
Author: Anne Cuyler Salsich Forms of Material (links to similar genres) Administrative Information
Consists of published papers concerning the landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling of July 6, 1983 that employer pension plans that paid different amounts to men and women violated federal civil rights laws. Amy J. Gittler of the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest successfully argued the case on behalf of plaintiff Nathalie Norris. The legal documents include Gittler’s brief (booklet), a copy of the Opinion of the Supreme Court, and a transcript of the Proceedings before the Supreme Court. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor cast the deciding vote.
Additional materials include a news release by the Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest with a letter by Nathalie Norris; an article on Gittler’s successful Supreme Court case in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine; a letter to the editor criticizing the article and Gittler’s response, also in the Oberlin Alumni Magazine; and a restricted student file for Gittler.
INVENTORY
Box 1
Oberlin Alumni Magazine, 1983-84
Ted Gest, “Amy Gittler ’72 Argues and Wins a Landmark Decision,”
Autumn 1983: 29-32
Letters to the Editor by Ralph W. Heunemann and Amy J. Gittler, Spring
1984: 63-64
News Release: Arizona Center for Law in the Public Interest, c. 1983
Legal Documents, 1982-83
Arizona Governing Committee for Tax Deferred Annuity and Deferred
Compensation Plans, etc., et al., v. Nathalie Norris, Supreme Court of the
United States
Brief of Respondents, October Term, 1982 (booklet)
Official Transcript, March 28, 1983
Opinion, July 6, 1983
Amy J. Gittler References File, 1972, 1974 RESTRICTED