Women's History Month (March): Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Click here for the Heather Cox Richardson entry in her diary, "Letters from an American," for March 31.

Noting that "On Wednesday, President Joe Biden issued an executive order instructing the National Park Service to “highlight important figures and chapters in women’s history," HCR writes:

In a time when American women are seeing their rights stripped away, it seems worthwhile on this last day of Women’s History Month to highlight the work of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who challenged the laws that barred women from jobs and denied them rights, eventually setting the country on a path to extend equal justice under law to women and LGBTQ Americans.

She goes on to tell how RBG, who was born on March 15, 1933,  spent her whole life battling against sexual discrimination in an age when women were definitely seen as second-class citizens. The first time she appeared before the U.S. Supreme Court, she quoted nineteenth-century abolitionist and women’s rights activist Sarah Grimké: “I ask no favor for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”

One of her important dissents from the majority opinion of SCOTUS was the disastrous decision in Shelby County v. Holder:

In 2013, Ginsburg famously dissented from the majority in Shelby County v. Holder, the case that gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The majority decided to remove the provision of the law that required states with histories of voter suppression to get federal approval before changing election laws, arguing that such preclearance was no longer necessary. Ginsburg wrote: “Throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work to stop discriminatory changes is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.” As she predicted, after the decision, many states immediately began to restrict voting.