The State - News from Dec. 31, 1986

A state Senate committee decided not to pay a $20,000 libel settlement won by feminist attorney Gloria Allred against former state Sen. John Schmitz over a 1981 press release calling her a “slick, butch lawyeress.” The Senate Rules Committee deadlocked 2-2 on whether to pay the settlement to Allred in addition to paying the cost of defending Schmitz in court. Allred, calling the vote “a victory for the taxpayers of California,” said she would attempt to get the money from Schmitz and donate it to various groups representing womens’ rights, homosexuals and Jews. Schmitz, a conservative Republican from Newport Beach who gave up his state Senate seat in an unsuccessful 1982 bid for the U.S. Senate, is now a political science teacher at Rancho Santiago College in Santa Ana. He has issued a public apology to Allred. Schmitz maintained that he did not write or authorize the press release that resulted in Allred’s $10-million libel suit.