March 15, 1933–September 18, 2020
“In the ’50s, too many women, even though they were very smart,
lived to make the man feel that he was brainier. It was a sad thing.”
Spoken by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I lived those words along with many other girls and young women in the 1950s. My mother had instilled in me that it was unfeminine to be good at math, so I took math lessons halfheartedly. This changed after I was failing algebra, after which my father helped me, and I in turn helped a girlfriend. Eventually, when I was getting 100s on exams, I didn’t want the boys to know.
Fortunately for Ruth, neither of her parents taught her such nonsense. When she made Law Review at Harvard, even though her Harvard-educated tax-attorney husband, Marty, didn’t, he was so proud of her that he bragged about it. Marty was also genuinely delighted about her Supreme Court appointment and her many other accomplishments.
Despite her great personal support system, Ruth had to overcome many misogynistic challenges, which in retrospect was a blessing in disguise for today’s women. The unfair treatment Ruth suffered undoubtedly made her more determined to do whatever she could to change the laws and society.
When Martin found employment in New York City, Ruth transferred from Harvard Law to Columbia Law School. She graduated in 1959, tied for first in her class. Also, she had been the first woman to earn a place on two major law reviews: the Harvard Law Review and the Columbia Law Review.
Regardless, Ruth, and Sandra Day O’Connor, who was three years older—both extraordinary achievers—were refused acceptance at law firms due to their gender. Also, despite strong recommendations from esteemed law professors, Ruth was denied a clerkship with Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. After that, a Columbia professor told the judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York that if he didn’t give Ruth the open clerkship position, he would never again recommend a student. Ruth got that job and held it for two years.
In 1961, Ruth again tried for employment at law firms. This time she received some offers, but always at a lower salary than her male counterparts. To make lemonade out of these lemons, she spurned the inferior offers and spent two years with the Columbia Law School Project on International Procedure. She was so determined to excel that she learned Swedish to coauthor a book on civil procedure in Sweden. There, Ruth noticed that women made up 20–25% of all law students, more than ten times the percentage at Harvard. She also noted that one of the judges whom she observed for her research was eight months pregnant and still working.
From 1963 to 1972, Ruth was a professor at Rutgers Law School. She was paid less than her male colleagues because she had a husband with a well-paid job. In 1965, fearing vocational repercussions, Ruth worked to hide her pregnancy. In 1970, in addition to her teaching, she cofounded the Women’s Rights Law Review Reporter, the first law journal in the U.S. to focus exclusively on women’s rights.
From 1972 to 1980, Ruth taught at Columbia University, where she became the first tenured woman and coauthored the first law-school casebook on sex discrimination. While at Columbia, she also cofounded the Women’s Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). She represented the ACLU before the Supreme Court between 1973 and 1976, and won five of the six female-discrimination cases she argued.
Until 1980, immediately after the U.S. Senate confirmed President Jimmy Carter’s nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Ruth worked successfully on numerous other cases that concerned equal treatment of the sexes. Thirteen years later, in 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated her to become an Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, where she served until her death at age eighty-seven.
Even though some of RBG’s judicial activism benefited women, I feel that it’s wrong to rule from the bench. One happily-ever-after example of RBG’s activism regards the Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in 1998. The plaintiff, a female worker, was paid significantly less than males with the same qualifications. Ms. Ledbetter sued under the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which holds that covered employers can’t discriminate on the basis of gender. It’s noteworthy that Ledbetter initially made the same salary as her male coworkers, but by 1998, when she retired from the company, she was making thousands less per year than men doing the same job. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court ruled that Goodyear was protected by the statute of limitations.
In sympathy to Ms. Ledbetter, she was probably either long unaware of the disparity or had job-security fears that she’d be considered a troublemaker if she complained. RBG, who had voted in favor of Ledbetter, was incensed at Goodyear’s exoneration. She argued that the 180-day time limit on the Civil Rights Act shouldn’t apply in the case of discriminatory pay since gender-based discrimination can happen gradually. “A worker knows immediately if she is denied a promotion or transfer,” Justice Ginsburg said. “Compensation disparities, in contrast, are often hidden from sight.”
RBG then called for Congress to change the law, and worked with President Obama to pass the very first piece of legislation he signed, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, a copy of which hung proudly in Ruth’s office.
Among many of the cases Justice Ginsburg joined in, the majority concerned pro-female issues such as abortion rights, gender-related pay discrimination, male-only admissions (with the caveat of allowing such if there was “exceedingly persuasive justification),” and gay marriage (presumably a 50 percent female issue).
Despite their frequent clashing opinions, the liberal RBG was a dear friend of the late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia. When Ruth was asked how she found it so easy to get along with him, she answered, “I believe, like society, the Constitution is evolving.” Obviously, Scalia didn’t share that view. Wouldn’t America be a better place if its citizens chose to be as openminded and accepting as Ruth Bader Ginsberg?