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Duval retired from the Senate in March 1980. In 1983, President [[Ronald W. Reagan]] signed legislation to designate the third Monday of January as a federal holiday in honor of Dr. King. The law took effect in January 1986, two months before King critic Claude Duval died.
Duval's social conservatism also included opposition to the proposed [[Equal Rights Amendment]]. When the measure failed to gain ratification after an extended deadline in 1982, Duval recalled that "in the Sixties everybody was obsessed with their [sic] rights. Everybody worried about their [sic] rights. Rather than rights, people should talk more about their responsibility to their country."<ref>Anabelle Armstrong, "ERA foes celebrate, challenge," ''The Baton Rouge Advocate,'' July 1, 1982.</ref>
After he left the state Senate, Duval's political contributions went mostly to [[Republican Party|Republicans]]. There is no indication, however, that he himself switched parties. Among recipients of his donations were the Ronald W. Reagan presidential campaign, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, [[Republican Party|GOP]] Congressman William Henson Moore, III, of Baton Rouge, who ran for the [[U.S. Senate]] in 1986, and Democratic and later Republican Congressman Wilbert Joseph "Billy" Tauzin, Jr., of Lafourche Parish]]. Duval's contribution to Moore came in the spring of 1985.
Claude and Betty Duval are interred at Magnolia Cemetery in Houma. Duval was [[Episcopalian]]. In addition, to the Senate office facility, Duval is honored through the "Senator Claude B. Duval Scholarship" given at Nicholls State University in Thibodaux, Louisiana.
==References==
{{reflist}}
*Chauvin Funeral Home, Houma, Louisiana, obituary information on Claude B. Duval
*[http://www.nicholls.edu/finaid/schol-continuing.html]
*[www.legis.state.la.us/archive/06rs/lastlegs/s0511.pdf]
*[http://www.newsmeat.com/fec/bystate_detail.php?city=HOUMA&st=LA&last=DUVAL&first=CLAUDE]
*[http://www.genealogybuff.com/la/la-houma4.htm]
}}
