Liberal Icon, Associate Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Dead At 87

Over the decades, Ginsburg was con­stant­ly broad­en­ing her under­stand­ing of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” beyond her own expe­ri­ence. The justice’s expla­na­tion of “unjus­ti­fied inequal­i­ty” in Sessions drew from the Supreme Court’s 2015 deci­sion in Obergefell v. Hodges, which rec­og­nized same-sex cou­ples’ fun­da­men­tal right to mar­ry. Her con­nec­tion between sex dis­crim­i­na­tion and anti-gay dis­crim­i­na­tion was pre­scient. A few months after Obergefell came down, Ginsburg not­ed that fem­i­nism and mar­riage equal­i­ty are deeply inter­twined. “It’s a facet of the gay rights move­ment that peo­ple don’t think about enough,” the jus­tice said. “Why sud­den­ly mar­riage equal­i­ty? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s ‘head and mas­ter rule,’ ” which gave hus­bands total con­trol over mar­i­tal prop­er­ty. “Marriage was a rela­tion­ship between the dom­i­nant, bread­win­ning hus­band and the sub­or­di­nate, child-rear­ing wife,” Ginsburg con­tin­ued. States locked both part­ners into gen­der roles based on a stereo­typed vision of what mar­riage means. “What les­bian or gay man,” the jus­tice asked, “would want that?”https://​slate​.com/​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​2​0​2​0​/​0​9​/​r​u​t​h​-​b​a​d​e​r​-​g​i​n​s​b​u​r​g​-​c​h​a​n​g​e​d​-​t​h​e​-​w​o​r​l​d​.​h​tml

Here is the state­ment from the Senate Majority Leader Mitch Mcconnell of Kentucky