Jean Ledwith King, J.D., – Candidate for Trustee
Jean Ledwith King has been a Scio Township Trustee since 2004. Jean is a law review graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a member of the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame.
In 2006, Jean was named a Champion of Justice by the Michigan State Bar and has practiced law in Washtenaw County since 1972. As a long-time member of the Washtenaw County Historic District Commission, Jean’s advocacy to the County Commissioners was crucial in saving the viewshed of Gordon Hall. Additionally, Jean’s leadership as Scio Township Trustee and Historic District Commissioner provided important guidance in saving the Delhi Bridge in Scio.
On May 6, 2008, Jean was elected Ann Arbor District Public Library Board Member.
Jean cofounded Focus on Equal Employment for Women in 1970 to oppose the appointment of anti-feminist U.S. Supreme Court justices. That same year she cofounded the Women's Caucus of the Michigan Democratic Party, chairing it for its first three years. Probably the first such political caucus in the world, it challenged the makeup of Michigan's delegation to the 1972 Democratic National Convention under the McGovern-Fraser rules. King argued the challenge in Detroit and D.C. and with the help of women delegates from other states the challenge prevailed in Miami and resulted in the addition of 11 women with l/2 votes to the Michigan Humphrey delegation and the halving of 11 men's votes. In 1976 "half men/half women" became the rule for every state's delegations to national conventions.
Using a footnote which Dr. Bernice Sandler discovered in an executive order prohibiting sex discrimination by recipients of federal contracts, King and the members of Focus drafted and filed an administrative complaint with the U.S Department of Labor, later HEW, against the University of Michigan which had $65,000,000 in contracts with the Federal government. Focus challenged U-M employment practices for women at all levels and discrimination against women students. All stages of the complaint and its investigation were publicized in the Chronicle for Higher Education from its filing in May of 1970 through final agreement of the University to provide HEW with information. That occurred in December 1970 after HEW had begun cutting off contracts. In January 100 U-M faculty women had their salaries doubled and other issues were negotiated between HEW and the University. This occurred before the Equal Pay Act and Title VII applied to faculty women and gave hope to poorly paid academic women throughout the nation.
In July 1971 King was one of 100-plus founding members of the National Women's Political Caucus who met in Washington, D.C.
In 1974 King drafted a complaint under Title IX alleging sex discrimination against girls and women in the content of Houghton-Mifflin textbooks that the Kalamazoo school system had ordered for its elementary schools. Textbooks were eventually excluded from Title IX jurisdiction, but the Kalamazoo complaint preceded that exclusion and the publisher almost immediately began to revise its textbooks, meanwhile issuing a 135-page corrective document.
Since then King has handled dozens of Title IX cases against high schools and colleges that receive Federal funding on behalf of participants in 29 sports. In 1974, 1976, and 1982 she served on the steering committee of the annual National Women and the Law Conference; in 1977 she chaired the Michigan delegation to the women's conference in Houston.
In 1980, the clout of the University of Michigan's new sexual harassment policy was substantially increased when King represented two women students in separate complaints against faculty members, forcing the resignation of a tenured professor and the suspension of contact between another professor and female students for five years.
Nine years later King was inducted into the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame. In the 1990s, appointed to the post by the U.S. Congress, she served three years as co-chair of the research committee of the federal Glass Ceiling Commission, traveling to field hearings all over the United States. She taught Women and the Law at Eastern Michigan University and at Washtenaw Community College for 15 years. In 2006 King was named a Champion of Justice by the State Bar of Michigan; in the same year the Women Lawyers of Michigan named an annual award in her honor and King received the "Millie" award from the Michigan Women's Political Caucus.