“I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg
When one speaks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (known as RBG), one is reminded of one of the most representative women in the United States, a discreet but no less forceful fighter who succeeded in transforming US legislation in favor of human rights.
Personalities representing different sectors, from music, politics, feminist groups, the LGBTTTI community, even people living in Washington, D.C., turned out to pay tribute, both through digital media and outside the Supreme Court, to the woman who dedicated her life to building a more egalitarian country.
In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), the goal of which was to change laws to ensure effective equality between men and women.
RBG was born on March 13, 1933 in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Jewish immigrants. Her mother encouraged her to study and read, and reportedly spent a lot of time in debates with her. RBG decided to study law at Harvard University and was one of nine women from a generation of five hundred and forty-one men who were asked by the Dean to argue why they should take the place of a man in that institution.
From Rutgers University to the Supreme Court
Despite graduating with honors, she had a hard time getting into the legal profession, because it was not common to hire female lawyers at that time. She got a teaching position at Rutgers University, and from there, Ruth began her career, probably without imagining the legacy she was starting to build.
In 1972, she co-founded the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), the goal of which was to change laws to ensure effective equality between men and women. Ruth Bader Ginsburg began using the term gender in place of sex to remove the “confusing” connotations that the word represented.
From the legal profession, through a nomination by President Jimmy Carter, she became part of the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia, from where she continued to strengthen her work. She built a reputation for being centrist, even voting hand in hand with conservatives several times. An example of this is her stance of not listening to the discrimination case filed by a soldier who claimed to have been discharged because he was gay.
In 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her for a seat on the Supreme Court, and the Senate approved the nomination 93-3. With her arrival, she became the second woman to reach the highest U.S. court. As the Court began to become more conservative, Ruth Bader Ginsburg began to take an increasingly progressive stance.
When one speaks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (known as RBG), one is reminded of one of the most representative women in the United States, a discreet but no less forceful fighter who succeeded in transforming US legislation in favor of human rights.
RBG’s most relevant cases
Undoubtedly, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s efforts were aimed at representing or favoring cases that sought equality, contained in the Fourteenth Amendment, and which would gradually become her hallmark.
RBG assumed that one of her missions within the Court was to “educate” her white male colleagues who presumed that their view of reality was correct.
These cases are a clear reference of the work she developed during her judicial career:
Susan Struck: She was part of the Air Force when she became pregnant in 1970. At the time, women in the military were not allowed to be pregnant, so if they wanted to continue in the military, they had to have an abortion. Susan refused, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg helped her build her case, which argued that Struck was a victim of gender discrimination, since male soldiers who left pregnant women or were fathers were not forced to leave the military.
The Court agreed to a hearing of the case in 1972, and the Department of Defense retracted their attempt to fire Susan Struck on grounds of her pregnancy.
In Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, she defended Stephen Wiesenfeld, a widower who was left in charge of his baby. At the time he applied for Social Security support, he was denied, since that role was intended for women only. This case ruled unanimously in favor of Ruth’s client, on the grounds of an irrationality in the distinctions the law made between men and women.
In another famous case, Sharon Frontiero, a U.S. Air Force Lieutenant, tried to obtain dependent benefits for her husband; her application was denied. The Supreme Court found unconstitutional a federal law that required different criteria for male spouses of military members to receive benefits, as opposed to wives.
There is also the case of United States vs Virginia, where the policy of only admitting men to the Virginia Military Institute was overturned. In this case Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that no law or policy could deny women “full citizenship, the equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based on their individual talents and abilities.”
The legacy left by RBG has transformed the lives of thousands of people, because it managed to put the importance of equality between men and women at the center of the discussion. So, let’s hope she was able to take her “dissent necklace” with her, the one she managed to show when arguing her position in court. We will certainly need her voice.
In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co, Lilly Ledbetter sued Goodyear after learning that the company paid her a lesser compensation than her male colleagues for nineteen years. She won the case in federal court, the company appealed, and the court ruled against her on the grounds that the complaint exceeded the time limit. Ruth argued that her colleagues were indifferent to the wage discrimination, and although the lawsuit was unsuccessful at the time, years later Congress passed a law named Ledbetter, after Lily Ledbetter, which recognizes equal pay for men and women.
Finally, we can recall the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, where Ruth Bader Ginsburg was among those who approved the legislation by which the Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage at the federal level.
The future of the Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg confessed to her granddaughter that she wished not to be replaced until the new president arrived at the White House; however, it seems that this wish will not be heard by a Donald Trump with aspirations of reelection and who intends to fill the space of the great RBG with the conservative Amy Coney Barret. If this happens, the advances in legislation in favor of human rights in the United States will certainly be at risk.
The legacy left by RBG has transformed the lives of thousands of people, because it managed to put the importance of equality between men and women at the center of the discussion. So, let’s hope she was able to take her “dissent necklace” with her, the one she managed to show when arguing her position in court. We will certainly need her voice.
Much light in your endearing path, Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Is a Bolivian-Mexican; feminist, mother of a teenager, music lover, lover of concerts and soccer. Ethnologist from the National School of Anthropology and History with master’s studies in Human Development at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, Argentina. A human rights defender, she has worked mainly on women’s rights and cultural rights in different spaces, from civil society and public service.
