Repost from a listserve I'm on:
- - - -
September 18, 2020
Tonight, flowers are strewn on the steps of the Supreme Court, where “Equal
Justice Under Law” is carved in stone. More than a thousand people gathered
there tonight to mourn the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died
today from cancer at age 87.
Justice Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1933, in an
era when laws, as well as the customs they protected, treated women
differently than men. Ginsburg would grow up to challenge the laws that
barred women from jobs and denied them rights, eventually setting the
country on a path to extend equal justice under law to women and LGBTQ
Americans.
Joan Ruth Bader, who went by her middle name, was the second daughter in a
middle-class family. She went to public schools, where she excelled, and
won a full scholarship to Cornell. There, she met Martin Ginsburg, and they
married after she graduated. "What made Marty so overwhelmingly attractive
to me was that he cared that I had a brain," she later explained.
Relocating to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, for her husband’s army service, Ginsburg
scored high on the civil service exam but could find work only as a typist.
When she got pregnant with their daughter Jane, she lost her job.
Two years later, the couple moved back east where Marty had been admitted
to Harvard Law School. Ginsburg was admitted the next year, one of 9 women
in her class of more than 500 students; a dean asked her why she was
“taking the place of a man.” She excelled, becoming the first woman on the
prestigious Harvard Law Review. When her husband underwent surgery and
radiation treatments for testicular cancer, she cared for him and their
daughter, while managing her studies and helping Marty with his. She rarely
slept.
After he graduated, Martin Ginsburg got a job in New York, and Ginsburg
transferred to Columbia Law School, where she graduated at the top of her
class. But in 1959, law firms weren’t hiring women, and judges didn’t want
women—especially mothers, who might be distracted by their “familial
obligations”-- as clerks. Finally, her mentor, law professor Gerald
Gunther, got her a clerkship by threatening Judge Edmund Palmieri that if
he did not take her, Gunther would never send him a clerk again.
After her clerkship and two years in Sweden, where laws about gender
equality were far more advanced than in America, Ginsburg became one of
America’s first female law professors. She worked first at Rutgers
University-- where she hid her pregnancy with her second child, James,
until her contract was renewed—and then at Columbia Law School, where she
was the first woman the school tenured.
At Rutgers, she began her bid to level the legal playing field between men
and women, extending equal protection under the law to include gender.
Knowing she had to appeal to male judges, she often picked male plaintiffs
to establish the principle of gender equality. In 1971, she wrote the brief
for Sally Reed in the case of *Reed vs. Reed*, when the Supreme Court
decided that an Idaho law specifying that “males must be preferred to
females” in appointing administrators of estates was unconstitutional.
Chief Justice Warren Burger, who had been appointed by Richard Nixon,
wrote: “To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over
members of the other… is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative
choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth
Amendment” to the Constitution.
In 1972, Ginsburg won the case of *Moritz v. Commissioner*. She argued that
a law preventing a bachelor, Charles Moritz, from claiming a tax deduction
for the care of his aged mother because the deduction could be claimed only
by women, or by widowed or divorced men, was discriminatory. The United
States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit agreed, citing *Reed v. Reed*
when it decided that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the Equal
Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.
In that year, Ginsburg founded the Women’s Rights Project at the American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Between 1973 and 1976, she argued six gender
discrimination cases before the Supreme Court. She won five. The first time
she appeared before the court, she quoted nineteenth-century abolitionist
and women’s rights activist Sarah Grimke: “I ask no favor for my sex. All I
ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
Nominated to the bench by President Bill Clinton in 1993, she was confirmed
by a vote of 96 to 3. Clinton called her “the Thurgood Marshall of
gender-equality law.”
In her 27 years on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg championed equal rights both
from the majority and in dissent (which she would mark by wearing a
sequined collar), including her angry dissent in 2006 in *Ledbetter v.
Goodyear Tire & Rubber* when the plaintiff, Lilly Ledbetter, was denied
decades of missing wages because the statute of limitations had already
passed when she discovered she had been paid far less than the men with
whom she worked. “The court does not comprehend or is indifferent to the
insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination,”
Ginsburg wrote. Congress went on to change the law, and the first bill
President Barack Obama signed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.
In 2013, Ginsburg famously dissented from the majority in *Shelby County v.
Holder*, the case that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The majority
decided to remove the provision of the law that required states with
histories of voter suppression to get federal approval before changing
election laws, arguing that such preclearance was no longer necessary.
Ginsburg wrote: “[t]hrowing out preclearance when it has worked and is
continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away
your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” As she
predicted, after the decision, many states immediately began to restrict
voting.
Her dissent made her a cultural icon. Admirers called her “The Notorious
R.B.G.” after the rapper The Notorious B.I.G., wore clothing with her image
on it, dressed as her for Halloween, and bought RBG dolls and coloring
books. In 2018, the hit documentary "RBG" told the story of her life, and
as she aged, she became a fitness influencer for her relentless
strength-training regimen. She was also known for her plain speaking. When
asked how many women on the Supreme Court would be enough, for example, she
answered “nine.”
Ginsburg’s death has brought widespread mourning among those who saw her as
a champion for equal rights for women, LGBTQ Americans, minorities, and
those who believe the role of the government is to make sure that all
Americans enjoy equal justice under law. Upon her passing, former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton tweeted: “Justice Ginsburg paved the way for so
many women, including me. There will never be another like her. Thank you
RBG.”
For many, she seemed to be the last defender of an equality they fear is
slipping away. Robyn Walsh, a University of Miami religion professor,
watched the outpouring of grief after Ginsburg’s death and wrote “It says a
lot about us that the loss of one voice leaves women and their allies
feeling so helpless. I am grateful for RBG, her advocacy, and her strength.
I'm enraged that we find ourselves here.”
That rage, prompted by the prospect of a Trump appointee in Ginsburg’s
seat, led donors to pour money into Democratic coffers tonight. Democratic
donors gave more than $12.5 million in two hours to the ActBlue donation
processing site, a rate of more than $100,000 a minute. The effect of the
loss of her voice and vote on the court will become clear quickly. On
November 10, just a week after the upcoming presidential election, the
court is scheduled to hear a Republican challenge to the Affordable Care
Act, also known as Obamacare. In 2012, the court upheld the law by a 5-4
vote.
Ginsburg often quoted Justice Louis Brandeis’s famous line: “The greatest
menace to freedom is an inert people,” and she advised people “to fight for
the things you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join
you.” Setting an example for how to advance the principle of equality, she
told the directors of the documentary “RBG” that she wanted to be
remembered “Just as someone who did whatever she could, with whatever
limited talent she had, to move society along in the direction I would like
it to be for my children and grandchildren.”
Upon hearing of Ginsburg's death, former U.S. Attorney and law professor
Joyce Vance tweeted, “We should honor the life of RBG, American hero, by
refusing to give in, refusing to back down, fighting for the civil rights
of all people & demanding our leaders honor the rule of law. This is our
fight now.”
Rest in power, Justice Ginsburg.
May her memory be a blessing.