Ruth Bader Ginsberg
2022
Supreme Court Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsberg was born March 15, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York. She fought for gender equality, the rights of workers, and the separation of church and state. She earned the nickname, “The Notorious R.B.G.” for her passionate dissents on the Supreme Court.
Ginsberg dealt personally with the toxic effects of sexism throughout her life. In 1956, she was one of 9 women admitted to Harvard Law School, along with approximately 500 men. The dean invited the female law students to dinner, and asked, “Why are you at Harvard Law School, taking the place of a man?" When she followed her husband to New York City, the same dean refused to allow her to complete her third year of schooling remotely. Ginsburg transferred to Columbia, becoming the first woman to serve on both the Harvard Law Review and Columbia Law Review. In 1959, she earned her law degree at Columbia and tied for first in her class.
"A gender line... helps to keep women not on a pedestal, but in a cage… Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn't be that women are the exception."
Ginsberg worked predominantly in academia from 1961 to 1978. In 1972, she co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which participated in more than 300 gender discrimination cases between 1972 and 1974. Between 1973 and 1976, she argued six gender discrimination cases before the Supreme Court, winning five.
"Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time... "You can't have it all, all at once."
Ginsburg planned a strategic course, taking aim at specific discriminatory statutes and building on each successive victory. She supported cases for both women and men, striving for equality.
Ginsburg wrote the brief for Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S.71 (1971), in which the Supreme Court extended the protections of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to women. In 1972, she argued in Moritz v. Commissioner on behalf of a man who had been denied a caregiver deduction because of his gender. In 1973 she argued for Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, which challenged a statute that made it more difficult for women service members to claim an increased housing allowance for her husband, than for men seeking the same allowance for their wives. Ginsburg argued that the statute treated women as inferior, and the Supreme Court ruled 8–1 in Frontiero's favor.
The court again ruled in Ginsburg's favor in Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636 (1975). Ginsburg represented a widower who had been denied survivor benefits under Social Security, which permitted widows but not widowers to collect special benefits while caring for minor children. She argued that the statute discriminated against male survivors of workers by denying them the same protection as their female counterparts.
"Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you."
In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. She wrote the majority opinion on United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515 (1996) in which the Supreme Court struck down the long standing male-only admission policy of the Virginia Military Institute in a 7 – 1 decision.
Ruth Bader Ginsberg served on the Supreme Court until her death in Sept. 18, 2020, at the age of 87.