Essays on Ruth Bader Ginsburg: How the justice changed and healed Sacramento leaders’ lives

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on Friday due to complications of metastatic pancreas cancer. She was 87.

Tributes for the second woman on the high court — a titan of the American left, who delivered progressive votes on defining issues of equity and women’s rights for 27 years — have flowed in from California’s halls of power, as well as lawmakers, scholars and celebrities across the nation and around the world.

But Ginsburg also transformed the lives of Sacramento’s leading judicial and political minds — Sacramento Mayor pro Tem Angelique Ashby, California Supreme Court Chief Justice Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, Senate pro Tem Toni G. Atkins, Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California’s Jodi Hicks and Chief U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District Kimberly J. Mueller.

These are their reflections, in their own words:

‘I saw myself in her’

Angelique Ashby, Sacramento Mayor pro Tempore and Councilwoman

She was most famous for her dissenting opinions. In fact, she rarely authored the majority. She said she saw the dissents as a message “appealing to the intelligence of a future day.” How amazing is that?

She felt her greatest value was to preserve the record, and leave a breadcrumb trail for those who would follow. Is that not a summary of her very life? She and Justice Sandra Day O’Connor once noted that had they not been born in the era repressing women lawyers they would have been retired, wealthy, former, law partners from big firms. But instead they pursued public service and, as such, became the first and second woman on the United States Supreme Court.

I was 24 years old when I applied for law school. I was a single mom with a 4-year old-son. I was poor and on my own. No one in my family had a law degree. I would be the first. It felt heavy and unachievable. And there were plenty of people willing to tell me it was impossible. But for me, and for thousands of women across this country, there were a few role models — not many, but really you only need one good one.

Mine was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In law school, she too was a mom. She was like me. Or at least, I saw myself in her.

Her whole life was about taking what she was given and making it count for more than herself. Her greatest victories in achieving equity gains for women came by defending men. She taught because no one would hire her, despite her extraordinary academic achievements. She used losing arguments as love letters to the future. She made friends with Justice Antonin Scalia, her polar opposite. She never gave up on appealing to the better judgments of us all.

She loved and served a country that for much of her life repressed her based on her gender. She pursued her dreams anyway. Her failures made her notorious. Her accomplishments made her our hero. Now her legacy is our opportunity to move this country towards a better future.

Ashby, the only woman on the Sacramento City Council, represents Natomas.

Imagine what women can do

Tani G. Cantil-Sakauye, Chief Justice of the California Supreme Court

It feels impossible to overestimate the importance that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had on my generation of female lawyers and jurists. The legal community is in mourning. She was one of ours. She showed the world how to punch above your weight class. Her majority opinions concerning gender and education equality are inspiring; and her withering gut punch in a dissent reverberated many times over the majority opinion.

I always found it noteworthy that Justice Ginsburg shared a warm friendship with her ideological opposite, Justice Antonin Scalia, because it went to the heart of how we as judges and justices should treat our colleagues — with civility and respect.

Last year, when the Judicial Council of California presented a Distinguished Service Award to Alameda Superior Court Judge Carol Brosnahan, Justice Ginsburg submitted a brief video of congratulations, as she and Judge Brosnahan were longtime friends. They had entered Harvard Law School together in 1956 — two of nine women in a class of more than 500. Justice Ginsburg said the dean pointed out that the women occupied seats that could have been held by men. “That dean,” said Justice Ginsburg, “could hardly imagine what women could do once the artificial barriers to our opportunities were removed.”

We lost Justice Ginsburg on the eve of Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year. When she praised Judge Brosnahan last year, she said her friend embodied tikkun olam. “In Jewish tradition,” Justice Ginsburg said, “tikkun olam refers to our obligation to repair tears in our communities. You have done just that with compassion and wisdom.” When I heard her say that, I thought to myself, “And so have you Justice Ginsburg. So have you.”

Cantil-Sakauye, a Sacramento native, is the first Filipino American and the second woman to serve as the state’s chief justice.

‘Our hero and our hope’

Toni G. Atkins, California Senate President pro Tempore

While no one person should shoulder the heady weight of justice, there are a few giants of our time who certainly carried that weight more than others. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was one of those legends.

Justice Ginsburg defied the gender roles prescribed to women of her generation and broke through barriers. As one of just nine women out of hundreds in her Harvard Law School cohort, she proved that not only was she deserving of the spot, but that all women — and anyone, regardless of their gender, station, or who they love — were equal. And she did it while also balancing being a wife, a mother and raising a family.

Perhaps that’s why Justice Ginsburg resonated with us all, myself included, so deeply. Her powerful leadership, her brave dissents, and her relentless quest to stand on the right side of history taught us all what courage of conviction truly is. She taught us the power of the law, and that we hold the power to change it in a way that can improve the lives of others. She taught us how to fight.

Justice Ginsburg didn’t set out to be a celebrity, but her efforts on behalf of the American people were so monumental that we couldn’t help but be enthralled, and inspired, by her. Her professional accomplishments were vast, but the real reason why she graced everything from coffee mugs to T-shirts — and why so many of us are collectively mourning her passing — is because she was both our hero and our hope.

Justice Ginsburg’s passing is a devastating loss for our country at a pivotal moment, but her legacy lives on, and we will remember and honor her for who she was, and who she inspires us to be — a fierce champion of feminism, equality, and progress.

Atkins, a San Diego Democrat, is the first woman chosen as the state’s Senate President pro Tempore.

A hero for our daughters

Jodi Hicks, CEO and President of Planned Parenthood Affiliates of California

On Friday night, I joined the millions of women, girls, and people across the nation who wept at hearing the news that one of our country’s biggest heroes, trailblazers, and champions for equality had died: Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

After quickly texting my team and colleagues across California’s Planned Parenthood affiliates, I returned the calls from my mother, my sister, my oldest daughter, my aunts, and my friends in need of solace, comfort, and hope. Then I realized my 11-year-old daughter, who’s been making COVID-19 masks emblazoned with RBG on them, didn’t know the news.

I had already cried with my oldest daughter, but I didn’t know how to break it to my youngest. Part of our bedtime ritual is reading Goodnight Stories for Rebel Girls, and page #168 of the book is earmarked on RBG. In a year with so much loss, how do I tell her another one our heroes has died? And how do I, as a mother, as a CEO, as feminist, tell my daughter that RBG’s death was already becoming politicized by a group of men hell-bent on restricting our very freedoms and human rights?

But one of the things RBG gave us was resolve, conviction and strength. My mother cried the same way my daughters cried, and I heard the resolve in her voice the same I heard with my daughters.

Last night, we mourned, this morning we met to discuss the next days, weeks, months, years — and tonight, we march. We march, virtually on Zoom calls, in caravans, and 6 feet apart from one another, not only to make sure her dying wish goes answered — to ensure her vacancy isn’t replaced until America votes for a new president—but also march to further the very values Justice Ginsburg so believed in.

Justice Ginsburg carried the weight of the powerless on her shoulders and fought for justice until her dying breath. She fought fiercely for reproductive freedom, including safe, legal abortion — always holding the line. She lifted-up communities of color from the margins and put them front and center.

She protected the LGBTQ+ community because she understood that every person deserves the right to love. She taught all of us to aspire to a world that is equitable. She taught a generation to dissent. Her memory will be a movement to pick up that fight and honor her legacy.

Hicks is a longtime California public health and social justice advocate.

A judge’s judge

Kimberly J. Mueller, Chief U.S. District Judge for the Eastern District of California

When nominated in 1993 to serve as an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been judging for 13 years on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. She had come to know well what it is to be a judge. I was in law school at the time, and followed her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee with great interest, though the thought of becoming a judge had not entered my mind. In her opening remarks to the Committee, then-Judge Ginsburg acknowledged standing on the shoulders of the likes of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harriet Tubman; women judges now, myself and many of my colleagues, stand on hers. Judge Ginsburg explained her fundamental understanding, that “We, the People” appear first in the Constitution, followed by elected representatives and then the judiciary, which “is placed apart from the political fray so that its members can judge fairly, impartially, in accordance with the law, and without fear about the animosity of any pressure group.” She expressed her simple hope at the time, if confirmed, to “carry out that function without fanfare, but with due care.”

As our oaths require, judges do retreat into what leading appellate lawyer Kathleen Sullivan describes as a kind of “perfect isolation,” operating at a remove from politics and studiously avoiding any quid pro quo. At the same time, we are shaped by our paths to the bench. In her 10 years as an advocate before becoming a judge, Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s path was groundbreaking and inspiring. Considered the Thurgood Marshall for women and the advancement of gender equity, she identified cases best suited to further equality under the law. Her choices were strategic, and effective. In one instance, she represented a man whose circumstances helped illustrate a key point: Stephen Wiesenfeld, a widower and single dad after his wife died in childbirth was ineligible for Social Security survivors’ benefits available only to widows. Through his case, Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636 (1975), Ruth Bader Ginsburg persuaded the Supreme Court that the Social Security Act’s gender-based distinctions violated the Due Process Clause of the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment, effecting a permanent change in the law.

As a Circuit Judge and Associate Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg honed the ability to explain and persuade, or record her dissents as need be, through the careful, precise writing of an appellate judge. Performing her job with the “due care” she promised at the beginning, she recorded in lucid prose her allegiance to equality for all under the law, without regard to race, gender or sexual orientation. She toiled quietly and tirelessly, a legendary workhorse who regularly burned the midnight oil, out of the public eye, with the continuing steadfast support of her family and beloved husband Marty. It was not that long ago, in 2011, she humbly told an audience at UC Hastings College of Law, “I would just like people to think of me as a judge who did the best she could with whatever limited talent I had, to keep our country true to what makes it a great nation and to make things a little better than they might have been if I hadn’t been there.”

It’s only recently that Notorious RBG was born. Although the Justice gamely acknowledged this new persona in good humor, it was not a role she had invited or encouraged. Rather, it was a sign that her words, so carefully conceived and crafted, had pierced the heavy red velvet curtains of the Supreme Court Courtroom, and filtered past the 16 marble columns guarding the Court’s front door while supporting the words inscribed above: Equal Justice Under the Law. “We, the People” heard the Justice’s words, and they resonated with many, women especially. Legal historians may debate precisely the moment RBG became a “people’s Justice,” but her literate and at times fiery dissents of the last seven years are undoubtedly a piece of the puzzle. Still written with “due care,” carefully reasoned and tightly structured, those dissents rang out loud and clear, in cases such as Fisher v. University of Texas, an affirmative action case decided in 2013; Shelby County v. Holder, a voting rights case decided the same year; and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby in 2014, a case addressing the Affordable Care Act’s contraceptive mandate. In the latter, the Justice read a portion of her dissent from the bench, a way of emphasizing in her firmly quiet voice the strength of her commitment to her position. Even in dissent, Justice Ginsburg remained committed to the collegiality among judicial colleagues essential for a court to function well. She famously fostered a close friendship with Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, with whom she shared a love of opera and family. I once heard her tell an audience of judges and lawyers that his razor-sharp critiques of her draft pre-publication opinions as they circulated through the Court made them much, much better.

I have to think it is the “people’s Justice” whose passing prompted the remarkable outpouring of grief, respect and appreciation represented by more than 1,000 people gathering somberly at the Supreme Court Friday evening, candles held aloft, pale pink roses placed lovingly on the west steps, facing the U.S. Capitol. There can be no doubt but that she judged, as promised, “without fear about the animosity of any pressure group.” The fulfillment of that promise is recorded in her library of opinions, majority, concurrences and dissents alike. Her opinions for both courts on which she served, and her carefully crafted legal briefs as a lawyer, are a lasting testament to her commitment to the rule of law and the high minded, well-crafted expression of legal reasoning.

Justice Ginsburg’s passing leaves two Associate Justices who are women — at least for now. The Justice had expected “to see three, four, perhaps even more women on the High Court Bench” in her lifetime. She joined the first, Sandra Day O’Connor, and served herself as the only woman for a few years after Justice O’Connor retired in early 2006. Her prediction came true though, with the appointment of Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Associate Justice Elena Kagan in 2010. In a monumental commissioned portrait, artist Nelson Shanks captured together all four women who have served on the court, Justices O’Connor and Ginsburg seated on a blue couch, Justices Sotomayor and Kagan standing behind. The portrait, which hangs in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, is a lasting visual tribute to Justice Ginsburg’s vision and legacy as an advocate and judge.

More than once, Justice Ginsburg was heard to say, “I will retire when I’m no longer able to do the job full speed.” It is fair to say she continued full speed until she died on September 18, the day after the U.S. Constitution she swore to uphold observed its 233rd birthday. The Kaddish, the Jewish mourning prayer, says: “May there be abundant peace from heaven.” May the Justice rest in abundant peace, secure in the knowledge that the record of her incredible life and work is now one for the ages.

Mueller is the first and only woman to serve the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California as an Article III judge.

This story was originally published September 19, 2020 at 4:28 PM.