Long before she became a pop culture icon and a celebrated Supreme Court Justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg executed one of the most brilliant legal campaigns in American history. In the early 1970s, gender discrimination was deeply embedded in federal and state laws. Women were routinely excluded from jury service, denied equal financial protections, and paid lower wages simply because of their gender.
Ginsburg did not attempt to overturn this entire framework overnight. Instead, as the founding director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project, she devised a quiet, step-by-step legal strategy. She set out to prove that discrimination on the basis of sex violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, chipping away at legal stereotypes until the entire apparatus of state-sanctioned sex discrimination fell apart.
The Foundations of a Legal Mastermind
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s legal strategy was forged directly from her own lived experiences with discrimination. Graduating at the top of her class from Columbia Law School in 1959, she possessed an impeccable academic record. Yet, despite her credentials, she could not secure a single job offer from a major New York law firm. Firms openly admitted that they were hesitant to hire women, particularly a working mother with a young child.
These personal rejections did not make Ginsburg cynical; they made her analytical. She realized that the legal system did not merely reflect societal prejudices—it actively enforced them under the guise of protectionism. Laws were framed as though they were protecting women, but in practice, they kept women financially dependent and legally subordinate.
When Ginsburg began teaching law at Rutgers and later Columbia in the late 1960s and early 1970s, she began analyzing statutory codes. She found hundreds of federal statutes that treated men and women differently based on outdated assumptions about family roles.
The Blueprint: Building Precedent Brick by Brick
Ginsburg recognized that the all-male judiciary of the 1970s did not see gender discrimination as a serious constitutional issue. Most judges viewed sex-based classifications as natural and benign. To change their minds, Ginsburg adopted an approach inspired by the civil rights litigation strategy used decades earlier by Thurgood Marshall.
Instead of asking courts for sweeping constitutional shifts that might alarm conservative judges, Ginsburg selected specific, narrow cases. Each case was designed to establish a precise legal principle that could be built upon in the next lawsuit.
Her strategy rested on three core principles:
- Targeting laws based on rigid gender stereotypes, regardless of whether the law harmed a woman or a man.
- Demonstrating that sex-based distinctions harmed real families and individuals in tangible, financial ways.
- Educating male judges that artificial gender roles restricted freedom and opportunity for everyone.
Reed v. Reed (1971): The Watershed Moment
Ginsburg’s first major Supreme Court victory came in the landmark case Reed v. Reed. The case involved an Idaho law that automatically preferred men over women to serve as administrators of deceased persons’ estates. When Sally Reed applied to manage the small estate of her deceased teenage son, her application was automatically denied in favor of her estranged ex-husband simply because he was male.
Ginsburg wrote the main brief for Sally Reed, arguing that the Idaho statute used an arbitrary classification—sex—to save probate courts the effort of holding individual qualification hearings. She argued that using gender as a shortcut for capability violated the Equal Protection Clause.
In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court agreed. For the very first time in American history, the High Court struck down a state law because it unconstitutionally discriminated on the basis of sex. Reed v. Reed established the essential foundation upon which all future gender equality litigation would rest.
The Strategy of Representing Male Plaintiffs
One of the most tactical decisions Ginsburg made during her campaign was choosing to represent male plaintiffs. She understood that an all-male panel of judges might struggle to identify with the struggles of women. However, when male judges saw that sex-based statutes restricted the choices and financial livelihoods of men, the arbitrary nature of gender roles became impossible to ignore.
Moritz v. Commissioner (1972)
In Moritz v. Commissioner, Ginsburg represented Charles Moritz, a bachelor who took care of his 89-year-old mother. Moritz attempted to claim a federal tax deduction for dependent care expenses. The Internal Revenue Code, however, explicitly stated that the deduction was only available to women, widowers, or divorced men. Because Moritz was a never-married man, the IRS denied his deduction.
Ginsburg argued that the tax code assumed only women provided domestic care, thereby penalizing a man who assumed caregiving responsibilities. The federal appeals court ruled in Moritz’s favor, holding that sex-based classifications in tax laws were unconstitutional.
Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld (1975)
Perhaps the clearest example of this strategy occurred in Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld. Stephen Wiesenfeld was a young husband whose wife died during childbirth. Left alone to raise his newborn son, Wiesenfeld decided to stay home and provide full-time care.
When he applied for Social Security survivor benefits, he discovered that under the Social Security Act, survivor benefits were payable to a widow and her children, but not to a widower. The law assumed that a deceased husband was a family’s sole economic provider and that a deceased wife’s earnings were secondary and disposable.
Ginsburg brought Wiesenfeld’s case to the Supreme Court. She demonstrated a double-edged discrimination:
- It discriminated against working women like Wiesenfeld’s late wife, whose Social Security taxes yielded fewer protections for her family than those paid by male workers.
- It discriminated against surviving fathers who wanted to personally care for their children.
- It discriminated against motherless infants by denying them the full-time care of their surviving parent.
The Supreme Court unanimously ruled in Wiesenfeld’s favor. The case powerfully illustrated that rigid gender roles hindered both men and women from organizing their family lives as they chose.
| Case Name | Year | Primary Legal Question | Outcome & Strategic Impact |
| Reed v. Reed | 1971 | Can a state automatically prefer men over women as estate administrators? | Won. Established that sex discrimination violates the 14th Amendment. |
| Frontiero v. Richardson | 1973 | Can the military require female servicemembers to prove spouse dependency while assuming male spouses are dependent? | Won. Established that administrative convenience cannot justify gender discrimination. |
| Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld | 1975 | Can Social Security pay child-care survivor benefits to widows but deny them to widowers? | Won. Proved that gender stereotypes harm families, working women, and fathers alike. |
| Craig v. Boren | 1976 | Can a state set different minimum drinking ages for men and women based on statistical assumptions? | Won. Established the “intermediate scrutiny” legal standard for sex-based laws. |
Raising the Legal Standard: Establishing Intermediate Scrutiny
As Ginsburg brought case after case before the courts, she was working toward a broader legal objective: elevating the legal standard used to review sex discrimination claims.
Under constitutional law, ordinary laws only need to pass a “rational basis” test, meaning the government must show a plausible reason for the law. On the other end of the spectrum, racial discrimination faces “strict scrutiny,” requiring the government to prove a compelling interest using the narrowest means possible.
Ginsburg sought to convince the courts that sex-based discrimination was just as harmful as racial discrimination and deserved elevated scrutiny.
That breakthrough occurred in Craig v. Boren (1976). The case involved an Oklahoma statute that allowed 18-year-old women to purchase low-alcohol beer, while men had to be 21. The state defended the law using traffic safety statistics showing young men were more likely to drive under the influence.
Ginsburg authored an amicus brief for the ACLU, steering the Court toward a middle-ground standard. The Supreme Court adopted her framework, establishing a new legal standard known as intermediate scrutiny. Under this standard, any law that classifies people based on gender must serve an important governmental objective and be substantially related to achieving that objective. This ruling made it significantly harder for state and federal governments to justify sex-based laws.
The Culmination: United States v. Virginia (1996)
Decades after her groundbreaking work as an advocate, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was appointed to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton in 1993. Three years later, she authored the majority opinion in United States v. Virginia, which represented the logical conclusion of the legal strategy she had launched in the 1970s.
The case centered on the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), a state-funded military college that maintained an exclusive male-only admissions policy. Virginia argued that its rigorous physical training model was unsuitable for women and offered to set up a separate, alternative program for women at a private college.
Writing for the Court, Justice Ginsburg rejected the state’s arguments. She declared that public institutions cannot exclude women based on generalized assumptions about what is suitable for “most women.”
Ginsburg wrote that state actions separating individuals by gender must show an “exceedingly persuasive justification.” She emphasized that while inherent differences between men and women remain, those differences cannot be used to create or perpetuate the legal, social, and economic inferiority of women.
An Enduring Judicial Legacy
Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s litigation strategy redefined the landscape of American law. Her brilliant approach transformed equal protection jurisprudence, converting the Fourteenth Amendment into a robust instrument for personal autonomy and equal opportunity.
Rather than relying on sweeping rhetoric, she utilized meticulous research, carefully chosen plaintiffs, and relentless legal logic. By demonstrating that gender discrimination harmed fathers, husbands, working women, and children alike, she systematically persuaded an initially skeptical court system to rewrite the legal rules of society.
Her work ensured that individuals are evaluated by their personal capabilities and choices, rather than by outdated assumptions about their gender. Her methodical strategy stands as one of the most effective campaigns in constitutional history.
