OUT OF THE ATTIC

The proud Alexandria resident

In 1956, Alexandria resident Bruce Scott, a World War II veteran, was forced to resign from his position at the U.S. Department of Labor. In 1961, he applied for a job in the same department and passed the civil service exam. But he was denied employment by the Civil Service because he refused to discuss his homosexuality.

Scott argued that his sexual preference was irrelevant to his ability to do the job. When the Labor Department refused to rehire him, he filed a lawsuit. In doing so, he challenged the federal government’s hiring practices and changed our country’s definition of employment discrimination.

City directories list Scott’s residence during the early 1950s as {redacted} here in Alexandria. Between his forced resignation in 1956, and his retaking the civil service exam, he joined the Washington D.C. Chapter of the Mattachine Society, one of the early gay advocacy groups in the United States. The Washington chapter was started by Frank Kameny in 1960, who himself had been fired by the federal government for his sexuality.

By the time of an April 24, 1963 Washington Evening Star article published about his case, Scott was 51 and felt ready for the fight that he knew would “out” him as homosexual. He reasoned that discomfort was a price he was willing to pay to force the government to study whether there was a correlation between homosexuality and work productivity.

The article quoted Scott's claim in court that:

The disqualification because of alleged immoral conduct is a denial of due process: and the disqualification for immoral conduct is arbitrary and capricious.

In 1965, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled in Scott’s favor, agreeing that a “vague” charge of homosexuality was not grounds for disqualification for federal employment. The ruling didn't immediately benefit Scott, who took a job with the State of Illinois during the legal process and worked there until he retired in 1985.

{snip}