U.S. judge broke gender barriers
SHIRLEY HUFSTEDLER 1925- 2016
Shirley M. Hufstedler, a California jurist who was the highestranking female judge on the federal bench before president Jimmy Carter selected her in 1979 as the first U.S. education secretary, died March 30 at a hospital in Glendale, Calif. She was 90.
The cause was cerebrovascular disease, said her son, Steve Hufstedler.
Hufstedler began her legal career in private practice in Los Angeles and ascended the judicial ranks in California before president Lyndon B. Johnson named her to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco in 1968.
She was one of the first women to serve as a U.S. federal judge and received frequent mentions as a possible nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court. When Carter invited her to join his cabinet, she was assured that her acceptance would not preclude a future nomination.
As education secretary, Hufstedler oversaw the creation of a new department of the federal government, a process fraught with bureaucratic complexity. The new agency absorbed more than 150 government education programs previously administered by five departments — principally the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, which in the realignment became the Department of Health and Human Services.
Some opponents of the Education Department feared federal intrusion in local schools and undue influence of teachers’ unions. Hufstedler sought to assuage those fears and presented a vision of the new agency as a guarantor of educational equity.
“When we think what we’re about and the programs we are going to try to keep,” the New York Times quoted her telling her staff, “we ought to think about who is the most vulnerable. The most seriously disadvantaged must be protected first.”
Hufstedler oversaw — in six months — the creation of an office with 17,000 employees and a $14-billion budget. She even played a role in selecting the agency’s acronym, “ED” for Education Department. She quipped that the alternative, “DED” for Department of Education, had a “singularly unhappy ring.”
Among the most controversial issues of the time was busing. As secretary, Hufstedler argued that “surely busing youngsters for the purpose of achieving racial integration is not a first resort.” But there were many situations, she said, “in which it must not be the last resort.”
She supported Title I programs for needy students and backed funding increases for women’s athletic programs. “Bigotry,” she remarked, “has always been much more popular than one likes to believe.”
Hufstedler’s time in Washington was cut short by Carter’s reelection defeat in 1980. Ronald Reagan, who succeeded him in the White House, moved to abolish the Education Department, a proposal that was revived by later Republican politicians but found scant congressional support.
Shirley Ann Mount was born in Denver on Aug. 24, 1925. Her mother was a teacher and her father was an engineer.
She received a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of New Mexico in 1945 and did secretarial work to save money to attend Stanford Law School.