Steven

“When the House Rules Committee chair during the debates over the bill, Howard Smith (D-VA), proposed the amendment adding “sex” to the list of protected categories, he was at least half-joking, and it was not liberal Democrats but southern Democrats and Republicans who approved it, 168–133. Courts decided that the “sex” part of the prohibition could not have been intended to stand on an equal footing with the others, and did not require that possible discrimination be scrutinized as strictly as in cases where race, color, or religion was at issue.”
― J. Bradford DeLong, Slouching Towards Utopia: An Economic History of the Twentieth Century