Lisa Senecal of Stowe is a columnist for VTDigger. A fourth-generation Vermonter who grew up in Orange, she is a writer, co-founder of the Maren Group and chairperson of the Vermont Commission on Women.
Since her death one week ago, much has been written about the barriers to women broken by Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. For the millions for whom she was a hero, it seems altogether fitting and a little less than surprising that death could not stop Justice Ginsburg from achieving one final first. On Friday, Sept. 25, Justice Ginsburg was the first woman to lie in state in the U.S. Capitol.
Our expectations of and what we need from our heroes seem to fall into two basic categories: the savior and the leader.
The savior does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Those heroes swoop in, often in the final moments before calamity occurs, and single-handedly save the day. And then they are gone, leaving us with no new tools of skills to save ourselves the next time. Not only are there few heroes who fall into the savior category, they also tend to have the frustrating drawback of being fictional. Some are literally fictional and live only in the pages and screens of DC and Marvel comics. Others are actual people who we have placed on pedestals and willed ourselves to disregard their imperfections, making them less real, less like us, than they truly were.
When the news of Justice Ginsburg’s death first hit me (and, admittedly, for a few days after that), my reaction was that of someone who had lost a savior hero. I read all the tributes to her. I despaired over a world without her serving on the Supreme Court. Helplessness washed over me, and I felt I would drown. And then it occurred to me that Justice Ginsburg’s superpower wasn’t flying in and lifting us from the water; she welcomed us into her boat, handed us a paddle and taught us to put our shoulders into it.
Justice Ginsburg’s legacy of legal arguments and victories as an attorney, and her majority opinions on the Supreme Court, changed lives and our country for the better. Yet, despite her great body of work, we remain a flawed nation with inequities that cannot be left to stand. She moved us closer to being “a more perfect union” as our Constitution’s preamble describes, but Justice Ginsburg left us all with much to do. And that’s the superpower of the leader type of hero: She taught us how to row toward shore, while lifting others and teaching them along the way.
She was a model of resilience and determination, and that was never more on display than when she appeared to have been tossed out of the boat herself. What captured America’s popular imagination and had her dubbed the Notorious RBG weren’t her victories; it was those beautiful, blazing dissents.
In most arenas of life, the losing side is expected to go away quietly. Athletes on the team that lost are rarely sought out for post-game interviews. We value the voices of the winners. If one of the defeated players does have the bad luck of a microphone shoved in front of their face, the questions are inevitably about where they personally fell short, what their side did wrong, and the other side did right.
Not so with legal dissents and, if you have not read any, let me suggest you begin with Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. Ledbetter had filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against Goodyear. She won and was awarded $3.5 million. That award was reduced to $350,000 by an appeals court that ruled that the 180-day period to file a complaint meant that any pay discrimination prior to the filing could not be considered — even if the discrimination had been ongoing. The question before the Supreme Court was the legitimacy of that 180-day limitation in considered past discrimination. The court ruled in favor of Goodyear.
Justice Ginsburg’s subtle lesson to us all in her dissenting opinions was that it’s not getting tossed from the boat that’s lethal; it’s the failure to get back in. She was on the losing side of Ledbetter v. Goodyear, but her determination to continue the fight led her to write this challenge in her dissenting opinion:
“Small initial discrepancies may not be seen as meet for a federal case, particularly when the employee, trying to succeed in a nontraditional environment, is averse to making waves. … Once again, the ball is in Congress’ court. … The Legislature may act to correct this court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII.”
Within two years of Justice Ginsburg’s dissent, the legislature did “act to correct the court’s parsimonious reading of Title VII” and passed the aptly titled “Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act” in 2009.
Like most women of her day — and far too many women to this day — Ruth Bader Ginsburg faced gender discrimination and barriers to her advancement at every turn. Sometimes she blew through those barriers and other times, as with Ledbetter dissent, she found a way around them, not just for herself but for other women, LGBTQ folk, those with disabilities, and communities of color.
If we truly want to honor the life and legacy of Justice Ginsburg, we can’t wait for a new hero to come to our rescue and pull us from a sea of despair. Rather, we do as Ruth taught us: keep rowing, putting our shoulders into it, and lifting up and teaching others the skills we learned from her. If we do it right, we’re going to need a bigger boat.
