DALLAS — The archive for the Dallas lawyer who argued the Roe v. Wade case in the 1970s has sold at auction for more than $600,000.
The winning bid for Linda Coffee's trove of documents was $615,633 at Nate D. Sanders Auctions on Friday night in Los Angeles, the auction house announced.
Coffee was the lawyer who argued before the U.S. Supreme Court over her client Norma McCorvey's right to an abortion. McCorvey was then known as "Jane Roe" in what would become the landmark Roe v. Wade case.
Coffee's archive that was auctioned Friday night included an affidavit signed by McCorvey, quill pens given to Coffee for arguing before the Supreme Court and nearly 150 documents and letters related to the case.
Coffee, 80, was born in Houston but grew up in Dallas, attending Woodrow Wilson High School.
She later graduated from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. Coffee clerked for federal judge Sarah Hughes, who famously swore in Lyndon B. Johnson as president on Air Force One after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Coffee later teamed up with fellow UT law school grad, Sarah Weddington, to challenge abortion laws in Texas.
“She was going to bring an abortion challenge," Coffee said. “I don’t know how she was going to do it, because she didn’t have a client."
Coffee said a friend from church introduced her to Norma McCorvey, who was pregnant and wanted an abortion.
In McCorvey's case, she was Roe and Wade was Henry Wade, the Dallas District Attorney.
Coffee and Weddington argued the case in a Dallas courtroom, which still exists on Ervay Street downtown. The three judges who heard the case agreed with Jane Roe’s attorneys. But the case was appealed to the Supreme Court.
“I was kind of nervous anyway because I never -- this is the only time I've ever addressed the United States Supreme Court,” Coffee said.
Last year, the Supreme Court reversed course, overruling Roe v. Wade and sending the decision on abortion to the states.
Coffee was watching from her home in East Texas when the overruling was announced.
"I guess I could say it's bittersweet," Coffee said at the time. "It just reminded me what it was like about 50 years ago when the late Sarah Weddington and I heard the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled in our favor. I followed all the ups and downs for so many years. There were times I thought it might be overruled. It was only today that I really felt that it has been."