Just one year prior, the same Congress had passed the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which prohibited wage differentials based on sex. The prohibition on sex discrimination was added to the Civil Rights Act by Howard W. Smith, a powerful Virginia Democrat who chaired the House Rules Committee and who strongly opposed the legislation. Smith's amendment was passed by a teller vote of 168 to 133. Historians debate Smith's motivation, whether it was a cynical attempt to defeat the bill by someone opposed to both civil rights for blacks and women, or an attempt to support their rights by broadening the bill to include women.[23][24][25][26] Smith expected that Republicans, who had included equal rights for women in their party's platform since 1944, would
