Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff. Lauren Boglebaum here. On August tenth, a force of nature entered the Supreme Court of the United States, and in the twenty seven years following her oath of office, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg definitely earned her nickname the Notorious RBG.
As the first Jewish woman and the second female justice ever to serve on the Supreme Court, Ginsburg entered the position already a trailblazer, but it was her incomparable work, ethic and tireless commitment to gender equality the truly set her apart. Ginsburg was one of only nine women in
her Harvard Law school class in nineteen fifty six. In an interview with the documentary series makers, she later said, you felt in classes as if all eyes were on you, and that if you didn't perform well, you'd be failing not only for yourself but for all women. Ginsburg also attributed part of her success in law school to parenting a fourteen month old daughter at the time of her studies. She was ranked first in her class at Harvard and Columbia,
the school she transferred to for her senior year. While Ginsburg had already established herself as an uncommonly accomplished and driven legal powerhouse by the time President Bill Clinton nominated her for the Supreme Court in June of It was the decisions she made after that that earned her a coveted position. There was nothing short of historic. Ginsburg died on September eighteenth, twenty of complications from metastatic cancer of
the pancreas, but her accomplishments live on today. Let's talk about three of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's most essential Supreme Court cases, in which her concurring opinion helped make our country a little bit more just for its citizens. So, after taking some time to settle into her role as an Associate Justice, Ginsburg began making a name for herself as an advocate for gender equality and women's rights. In the case of
the United States versus Virginia made that clear. At the time, Virginia Military Institute, or vm I, remained the only school that only admitted one gender among Virginia's public institutions of higher learning. Alumni of vm i's Citizens Soldier Training were considered hot commodities in the job market because the school's unique curriculum was designed to prepare students for leadership positions
in both civilian life and military service. Thanks to the competitive edge that the institution gave alumni, vm I had the largest per student endowment of all public undergraduate institutions in the country. The United States sued v m I and the state of Virginia, alleging that the school's men only admission policy violated the Fourteenth Amendments Equal Protection Clause, which prohibits states from denying anyone the equal protection of
their laws. Virginia argued that the restriction was fair game because women wouldn't be able to handle the rigorous nature of the program, but vm I also attempted to cover its spaces by proposing a parallel program for women called the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership or v w I l located at the private all women liberal arts school, Mary Baldwin College. Ginsburg and the majority on the court
weren't convinced. Writing for the seven to one majority, Ginsburg asserted, Virginia maintains that methodological differences are justified by the important differences between men and women in learning and developmental needs, but generalizations about the way women are estimates of what is appropriate for most women, no longer justified denying opportunity to women whose talent and capacity placed them outside the
average description. Ginsburg also stated that the v w I L was not an adequate compromise, since the Court considered it quote a pale shadow of vm I in terms of the range of curricular choices and faculty stature, funding, prestige, alumni support, and influence. The school contemplated going private to circumvent the ruling, but its board decided in a close vote, just eight to seven, to finally let women through the doors, thus ending the existence of men only public universities in America.
Of course, the Supreme Court hears all kinds of cases, not just gender issues. But let's talk about Friends of the Earth versus laid Law Environmental Services. In the year two thousand, when laid Law Environmental Services Incorporated bought a wastewater treatment plant, it was granted a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit that granted it permission to discharge treated
water and limited pollutants. However, laid Law repeatedly released amounts of mercury into South Carolina's North Tiger River that exceeded those limits and Eventually, plaintive petitioners Friends of the Earth and others filed a citizens suit under the Clean Water Act, which regulates the discharge of pollutants. After lawsuit began, laid Law began to comply with the permit and argued that the case was now moot, meaning resolved, because the company
had corrected its wrongdoing. But the Supreme Court wasn't having it. In the seven to two opinion delivered by Ginsburg, the Court held that a case from a citizen for civil penalties does not have to be dismissed as moot just because the defendant begins complying with regulations after litigation has already begun. In part, Ginsburg wrote, a defendant's voluntary cessation of allegedly unlawful contact ordinarily does not suffice to moot
a case. Congress has found that several penalties in the Clean Water Act cases do more than promote immediate compliance. They also deter future violations. And then, more recently was the case of a Burgha Fell versus Hodges In. In this case, fourteen same sex couples and two men whose same sex partners had passed away filed suits in their home states of Michigan, in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. At the time, all four of these states defined marriage as
a union between one man and one woman. The petitioners said that this narrow definition violated the Fourteenth Amendment because it denied them the right to get married or to have the marriages they had received in other states legally
recognized at home. After the trial courts in each state sided with the plaintiffs, the rulings were appealed in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, where the decisions were reversed and it was ruled that state bands did not, in fact violate the couple's Fourteenth Amendment rights to equal protection and due process. This split led to the Supreme
Court review. It was a close vote. Ginsburg excited with the five to four majority in the ruling, which held the same sex marriage bands are indeed violations of the
Fourteenth Amendments, due process and equal protection clauses. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion, the Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons within a lawful realm to define and express their identity This landmark civil rights case legalized same sex marriage across the United States, giving hundreds of thousands of lgbt Q plus Americans the same rights
and protections guaranteed to hetero sexual couples by both the Due Process claus and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. Thanks to Justice Ginsburg for her tireless work in promoting fairness and equality. May her memory be a blessing. Today's episode was written by Michelle Konstantinovski and produced by Tyler Klang. For more on this lots of other curious topics, visit how stuff works dot com. Brain Stuff is production of I heart Radio.
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