“I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability.”
Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the second woman to serve as a justice on the U.S Supreme Court, an unyielding trailblazer for gender equality, and a lifelong advocate for women’s legal rights, passed away at the age of 87 due to complications from cancer.
Her lifelong battle to defend the rights of women and minorities serves as an inspiration to many, helping to pave the way for women to pursue prestigious careers in the military, government, business, and the Supreme Court. Despite her modest beginnings—being born to immigrant parents, being one of nine women in her Harvard Law School class, and being rejected from a Supreme Court clerkship following her graduation—her lifetime resolve battling against gender-based discrimination led her to serve as the second woman on the U.S Supreme Court bench. Justice Ginsburg served as a justice on landmark cases which irrevocably advanced the rights of women and minorities for years to come.
In 1971, while working as a professor at Rutgers Law School, Justice Ginsburg wrote the lead brief in Reed v Reed—her first brief argued before the Supreme Court. Her brief, referencing a parallel between the gender-based discrimination endured by women and the racial discrimination endured by African Americans, examined whether men could be preferred over women as estate executors. In the brief, she stated, “activated by feminists of both sexes, courts and legislatures have begun to recognise the claim of women to full membership in the class ‘persons’ entitled due to process guarantees of life and liberty and the equal protection of the laws.” The court, concurring with Justice Ginsburg and marking the first time in U.S history that the Supreme Court nullified a law due to gender-based discrimination, struck down the Idaho Probate Law by recognizing gender-based discrimination as a fundamental violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
Among numerous landmark cases upon nomination to the U.S Supreme Court in 1992, Justice Ginsburg wrote the majority opinion for United States v. Virginia, which effectively struck down the Virginia Military Institute’s men-only admissions policy, arguing that the policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Justice Ginsburg wrote in her majority opinion that laws and policy should not deny women “full citizenship stature – equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and capacities.”
In 1999, the rights of individuals with developmental disabilities to live as members of the community were reinforced in the Supreme Court decision of Olmstead v. L.C.. The Supreme Court reinforced that the “unjustified isolation of individuals with disabilities through undue institutionalization” translated to discrimination for individuals with disabilities, effectively violating Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Justice Ginsburg held that states, in accordance with the Act, were “required to place persons with mental disabilities in community settings rather than in institutions.”
During the 2000 presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush, the Supreme Court reversed the Florida Supreme Court’s request for a manual recount of the state’s election ballots in a 5-4 decision. Justice Ginsburg, in her dissent, criticized the willingness of the majority, writing that “the extraordinary setting of this case has obscured the ordinary principle that dictates its proper resolution: federal courts defer to state high courts’ interpretations of their state’s own law. This principle reflects the core of federalism, on which all agree.” While the other dissenters wrote they “respectfully” voted against the majority, Justice Ginsburg famously signed “I dissent.”
In a landmark case that dealt with unequal pay on the grounds of gender discrimination, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Justice Ginsburg distinctively delivered her dissent from the bench. Lilly Ledbetter alleged she had been subject to discriminatory pay, suing her employer on the grounds of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Pay Act years after the claimed discrimination occurred. Despite the majority ruling against Lilly Ledbetter’s claim of discriminatory pay, Justice Ginsburg argued that the 180 day time limit under the Civil Rights Act should not apply when considering discriminatory pay due to the fact that gender-based discrimination occurred gradually and in an oftentimes elusive manner. In her dissent, Justice Ginsburg stated that “the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination.” On January 29, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which overturned the decision of the Supreme Court and amended the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to recognize the reality of wage discrimination and reset the limitations on discriminatory pay lawsuits with each paycheck.
In a more recent 2016 decision, Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, Ginsburg unwaveringly defended a woman’s right to choose. In response to a law passed in Texas in 2013, which intended to restrict access to abortion in the state through placing requirements on abortion clinics, the Supreme Court held that the requirements served as a burden on women seeking abortion access, therefore violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Justice Ginsburg delivered a contemptuous account of the law, arguing that the law in Texas “was beyond rational belief” and that the law could not “survive judicial inspection.”
Throughout her life, both while serving as a Justice of the U.S Supreme Court and prior to, Justice Ginsburg enduringly fought for the rights of women, for individuals with disabilities, for members of the LGBTQ+ community, and for the preservation of the rule of law in the United States. As a catalyzing judicial force and an extraordinary champion of equal rights and justice, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg upheld an unparalleled legacy in the judicial system—both in the United States and beyond.