“Over a long career on both sides of the bench - as a relentless litigator and incisive jurist - Justice (Ruth Bader) Ginsburg helped us see that discrimination on the basis of sex isn’t about an abstract ideal of equality, that it doesn’t only harm women, that it has real consequences for all of us. It’s about who we are - and who we can be. Justice Ginsburg inspired the generations who followed her, from the tiniest trick-or-treaters to law students burning the midnight oil to the most powerful leaders in the land. Michelle (Obama) and I admired her greatly, we’re profoundly thankful for the legacy she left this country, and we offer our gratitude and our condolences to her children and grandchildren tonight.”

- Former U.S. President Barack Obama in a Sept. 18 statement regarding the death of Ginsburg

Ginsburg died Sept. 18, at the age of 87, after complications with metastatic pancreatic cancer. For 27 years, she served on the U.S. Supreme Court. Before that, she held many positions in law.

After high school graduation, Ginsburg attended Cornell University where she met her husband, Martin, who died in 2010.

After college graduation, they married and lived in Oklahoma for her husband’s military service. While there, she could only get a job as a typist, even though she scored high on the civil service exam. When she became pregnant, she lost that job.

In a couple of years, they moved and both attended Harvard Law School. In one of her classes, she was only one of nine women in a total of 500, and the dean questioned why she was taking up a seat that should be for a man.

Later, she transferred to Columbia Law School and graduated in the top in her law school class.

“Despite her academic achievements, the doors to law firms were closed to women, and though recommended for a Supreme Court clerkship, she wasn’t even interviewed,” a Sept. 18 NPR article titled “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, champion of gender equality, dies at 87” by Nina Totenberg stated.

A law professor, who was also a mentor to Ginsburg, got her a clerkship in New York, which she had from 1959 to 1961, a year longer than most worked.

“In 1963, Ginsburg finally landed a teaching job at Rutgers Law School, where she, at one point, hid her second pregnancy by wearing her mother-in-law’s clothes. The ruse worked; her contract was renewed before her baby was born,” NPR said. “While at Rutgers, she began her work fighting gender discrimination.”

Ginsburg was an icon in fighting for fairness for both sexes. For her first big case, in Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Ginsburg fought for a Colorado man who was rejected a caregiving tax deduction simply because he was a single man.

“Charles Moritz was solely responsible for the care of his elderly mother, but he had been denied a caregiving tax deduction because he was an unmarried man,” Ria Tabacco Mar wrote in a Sept. 22 American Civil Liberties Union article titled “Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fight for gender equity was for all of us.” “By representing him, Ginsburg was able to show male judges that sex discrimination hurt men as well as women.”

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the deduction was only claimable by women or widowed or divorced men.

In partnership with her husband on the case, Ginsburg won in the lower courts. This achievement led to many statutes Ginsburg fought to overturn in the next decade.

Her first Supreme Court case was Reed v. Reed, where she represented Sally Reed, who believed “she should be the executor of her son’s estate instead of her ex-husband,” NPR stated. “The constitutional issue was whether a state could automatically prefer men over women as executors of estates. The answer from the all-male Supreme Court: no.”

Other cases she fought and won include Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld and Frontiero v. Richardson.

At Columbia Law School, Ginsburg was the first female tenured professor. She also started the Women’s Rights Project at the ACLU. She supervised hundreds of cases involving gender discrimination.

Former President Jimmy Carter, in 1980, named Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Former President Bill Clinton nominated her to the Supreme Court 13 years later. By a vote of 96-3, she was confirmed.

Ginsburg was the second woman appointed to the court, following Sandra Day O’Connor.

With the retirement of O’Conner in 2006, Ginsburg more often dissented in some cases, much to the praise of activists for women’s rights, as the court veered right politically.

“Dissenting in Ledbetter v. Goodyear in 2007, she called on Congress to pass legislation that would override a court decision that drastically limited back pay available for victims of employment discrimination. The resulting legislation was the first bill passed in 2009 after Obama took office,” NPR reported.

She also dissented in the outcome of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, in 2014, which allowed some for-profit companies to deny federal-mandated birth control coverage because of religious beliefs.

I, like Ginsburg thought, cannot believe this was and is still an issue. Birth control is basic women’s health care, and many women use birth control for other purposes than avoiding a pregnancy - like keeping ovarian cysts under control, such as I do.

“She viewed her dissents as a chance to persuade a future court,” NPR stated, citing a previous interview with Ginsburg.

“Some of my favorite opinions are dissenting opinions,” Ginsburg said. “I will not live to see what becomes of them, but I remain hopeful.”

I remain hopeful, too - hopeful in the possibilities and obligations of how America can and should grow forward for the betterment of its citizens. One such example is the seat on the Supreme Court, left open by the death of Ginsburg.

Continuing in his statement, Obama said, “Four and a half years ago, when Republicans refused to hold a hearing or an up-or-down vote on Merrick Garland, they invented the principle that the Senate shouldn’t fill an open seat on the Supreme Court before a new president was sworn in.

“A basic principle of the law - and of everyday fairness - is that we apply rules with consistency and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment. The rule of law, the legitimacy of our courts, the fundamental workings of our democracy all depend on that basic principle,” Obama said. “As votes are already being cast in this election, Republican senators are now called to apply that standard. The questions before the court now and in the coming years - with decisions that will determine whether or not our economy is fair, our society is just, women are treated equally, our planet survives and our democracy endures - are too consequential to future generations for courts to be filled through anything less than an unimpeachable process.”

In the NPR article, Totenberg said, “[Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell] refused for nearly a year to allow any consideration of Obama’s Supreme Court nominee. Back then, McDonnell’s justification was the upcoming presidential election, which he said would allow voters a chance to weigh in on what kind of justice they wanted. But now, with the tables turned, McConnell has made clear he will not follow the same course. Instead, he will try immediately to push through a (President Donald) Trump nominee so as to ensure a conservative justice to fill Ginsburg’s liberal shoes, even if Trump were to lose his reelection bid. Asked what he would do in circumstances such as these, McConnell said, ‘Oh, we’d fill it.’”

So what has changed, McConnell? The only answer is that now this precedent you made does not benefit you, your fellow Republicans and your political directions. This, by definition, is pure hypocrisy.

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett should not have occurred, and the Supreme Court hearings should not take place. An appointment to the highest level of court should be made after the 2020 general election, which is only a few weeks away. Already, more than two million voters have cast their ballots, several news media sites have reported.

I recently saw an image on Facebook that read, “You can’t spell truth without Ruth.” The best way to honor Ginsburg is to follow what is right and consistent in this new precedent made in 2016.

Stacey Koch

editorial assistant

Whitehall-Coplay Press

Northampton Press

Catasauqua Press