Bruce Scott, who died December 26, 2001 in Chicago of Parkinson's disease, wrote a vital chapter in the campaign to overturn the entrenched practice of homphobic discrimination in the US civil service. Scott, a long time resident of Chicago, lived in Washington DC following World War II. Like Otto Ulrich, who died this past September, Scott brought suit to regain his right to work in the federal government. The cases of Scott, Ulrich, Wentworth, and others combined in the mid-Seventies to force the government to abandon its policy of denying employment to homosexuals simply because they were homosexuals.Unlike Ulrich whose open admission of being homosexual led to withdrawal of his security clearance, Bruce Scott lost his job at the US Department of Labor in Washington DC for being suspected of being homosexual. Scott was forced to resign in 1956, but his case did not involve security issues. In the early 1960s, he reapplied to the federal government. His application was denied because he was a homosexual.
Scott sued. Dr Kameny remembers, "In March 1961, before the founding of MSW, he saw news of the Supreme Court (in)action in my case and contacted me. I referred him to the national office of the ACLU (there was not yet a DC affiliate), who took his case. MSW was founded in November, 1961, a week after the founding of the DC affiliate of the ACLU (of which latter his attorney became the first Board Chair). Scott then became a founding member of MSW, and worked with us until his return to Chicago some years later."
Scott, who had been both Vice-President and Secretary of Mattachine in Washington, initially won the case, Scott vs. Macy, in 1965 when the Federal Court of Appeals found that a suspicion or vague charge of being a homsexuality didn't give grounds for denying employment. The government's appeal, presenting more specific charges, lost again in 1968. Seven years later the Civil Service Commission ended its exclusion of homosexuals from government employment.
Unable to work in federal employment in Washington, DC during the legal proceedings, Bruce Scott returned to Chicago where he worked for the State of Illinois. He was also a member of Mattachine Midwest. In 1993, Bruce Scott was inducted into the City of Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
for additional discussion of Bruce C Scott and remembrances by Dr Franklin E Kameny and by Dr David K Johnson, please see the article on Gay Today at http://gaytoday.badpuppy.com/garchive/events/011802ev.htm. Photo: courtesy of Dr David K Johnson. We appreciate the information supplied by Dr. Kameny, Dr Johnson, and GayToday.
(c) 2002 Rainbow History Project