Notable Cases as Supreme Court Justice

Ruth Bader Ginsburg was both a skilled litigator and iconic Justice on the nation’s highest court. Prior to her 1993 appointment by President Bill Clinton, Ginsburg had won 5 of her 6 cases that were heard by the Supreme Court. Once seated on the bench, she became well-known for her powerful dissents and continual push for equality.

• 1996: United States v. Virginia

  Virginia Military Institute is a public military college known for its uniquely adversative environment of rigid military discipline whose graduates have gone on to become university presidents, chief executives in the private sector and hold high public office. Since its 1839 inception, VMI admitted exclusively male cadets until the Justice Department ordered them to admit women in 1990.

  Virginia challenged the order but the Supreme Court ruled that they had not demonstrated “exceedingly persuasive justification” for denying women equal opportunity. Ginsburg wrote in an opinion that excluding all women based on "generalizations about ‘the way women are,’ estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justify denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity place them outside the average description.”

• 2007: Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

  Lily Ledbetter was a supervisor at Goodyear Tire whose initial salary was in line with her male counterparts. However, her pay began to slip in relation to other supervisors over time. After nearly 20 years at the company, she was paid over $500 per month less than the lowest paid male supervisor.

  Ledbetter sued, alleging that she was paid an unfairly low salary because of her sex, a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. The Supreme Court ruled that Ledbetter had filed her lawsuit too late: she had failed to file a complaint within 180 days of each instance Goodyear Tire failed to increase her pay at a rate commensurable with her male counterparts.

  Ginsburg dissented, “Having received a pay increase, the female employee is unlikely to discern at once that she has experienced an adverse employment decision. She may have little reason even to suspect discrimination until a pattern develops incrementally and she ultimately becomes aware of the disparity.” She appealed to Congress to right the Court’s “cramped interpretation of Title VII”. In 2009, Congress passed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which amended Title VII to reset the 180 day statute of limitations with each paycheck as Ginsburg had implored.

• 2017: Moore v. Texas

  Bobby Moore fatally shot a store clerk during a botched robbery. Despite testimony from several mental health experts and IQ tests that indicated “significantly sub-average general intellectual function”, the Criminal Court of Appeals (CCA) in Texas determined that under precedent established in a 1992 case, Ex Parte Briseno, Moore was not intellectually disabled and sentenced him to death. Moore appealed to the Supreme Court for relief.

  In Ginsburg’s majority opinion, she incisively outlined the CCA’s errors. “The Briseno factors ‘create an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed’”. By relying on their antiquated 1992 guidelines and discarding medical evidence of significant intellectual disability, the CCA’s application of the death sentence for Moore was held to be in violation of the 8th Amendment prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment.

Notable Cases as Legal Advocate

• 1971: Reed v. Reed

  Sally and Cecil Reed shared custody of their adopted son, Skip. Upon his death, Sally applied to the county court to be appointed administrator of her son’s estate. Prior to her hearing date, Cecil filed a competing petition. The court rejected Sally’s request and issued letters of administration to Cecil based on the Idaho state law requiring when “several persons [are] claiming and equally entitled to administer, males must be preferred to females...”

  In her amicus brief with the ACLU, Ginsburg argued that the law discriminating on the basis of sex created a suspect classification requiring strict scrutiny. The Court concluded that Idaho law violated Sally’s right to equal protection but stopped short of the application of strict scrutiny Ginsburg had argued for.

• 1973: Frontiero v. Richardson

  Air Force Lieutenant Sharron Frontiero sought increased housing and medical allowances for herself and her husband. This would typically be granted automatically if a male applied for increased benefits for himself and his wife regardless of dependency status, but Frontiero was denied because she could not demonstrate that her husband was dependent on her for more than half of his support. The government conceded that the reason for differential treatment was that it was cheaper and easier to presume wives as dependent on their husbands than to require husbands to prove their wife’s dependency.

  Ginsburg urged the court to declare sex a suspect criterion, arguing that sex based classifications imply a judgment of inferiority and serve to “keep woman in her place, a place inferior to that occupied by men in our society.” Sex, she argued, like race or national origin, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no relationship to ability and therefore ought to be subject to strict scrutiny.

  The Court agreed with Ginsburg’s argument that sex was a “suspect classification subject to close judicial scrutiny”. They deemed the government's justification of administrative convenience insufficient and therefore a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

• 1975: Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld

  Stephen Wiesenfeld applied for survivors benefits under the Social Security Act for himself and his infant son after his wife, the primary earner of the family, died during childbirth. The Social Security office allowed him to obtain benefits for his son but denied him benefits as these were available only to surviving wives.

  Ginsburg argued that this unfairly discriminated against female wage earners by denying their surviving spouse and children the same protections that would have been provided had the breadwinner of the family had been male. The Court agreed, citing a key previous ruling in a case she had also argued: “The gender-based classification… is indistinguishable from that invalidated in Frontiero v. Richardson.”

  The decisions in these these cases would lay the groundwork for thousands of future equal protection cases.