The court overturned the Peters Court of Appeal`s decision in light of Norris, and the case was resolved positively shortly thereafter. The principles established in those cases required all employer-sponsored insurance and pension plans to treat men and women equally. Tonight at 8/7c PBS NewsHour will take a special look at Ginsburg`s life and legacy, as well as the political battle ahead over how and when to replace his seat. Kenyon was also one of the strongest supporters of founding the Women`s Rights Project at the ACLU. At Kenyon`s funeral in 1972, shortly after the WRP was founded, Murray said, «I think that when future historians judge the important issues of the twentieth century, they may well conclude that Justice Dorothy Kenyon was one of the giants who stood in bold relief against the American sky.» READ MORE: Ginsburg`s legacy and what`s in for the Supreme Court After leaving the WRP, Isabelle Katz Pinzler served in the Justice Department under President Clinton. She then became Special Advisor to the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and a visiting professor at New York Law School. She remembers thinking about WRP`s future as director and admits there were times when she didn`t think the project would survive. It was harder to raise money without Ginsburg`s fame and credibility associated with the WRP. Learn more>> Moss also looked at access to health care for pregnant women. One of their trials questioned a private hospital`s refusal to admit pregnant women for drug and alcohol treatment.

«We need to stop blaming women for their addiction,» Moss said. She turned to health care to work with her when a national debate on the issue emerged. Years later, the work of WRP staff and others on the subject has continued to have a positive impact. Inspired by her own experiences, Ginsburg began handling sex discrimination complaints recommended to her by the New Jersey branch of the American Civil Liberties Union. Ginsburg envisioned that men and women would «create new traditions through their actions as artificial barriers are removed and opportunities are opened up to them.» 3 The ACLU`s Women`s Rights Project was established in 1972 under Ginsburg`s leadership to remove these barriers and open up these opportunities. That same year, Ginsburg became the first woman to get a job at Columbia Law School. They argued that the mandate of the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to treat pregnancy like any other disability meant that if leave was granted for childbirth, the same right to leave should be extended to all temporarily disabled workers. The court approved the Southern California ACLU. It noted that the Off-Site Pregnancy Discrimination Act was a lower limit, not an upper limit, for the rights of pregnant workers and did not prohibit a State from requiring maternity leave. Margaret Moses, who joined WRP as an attorney in 1978, taught a course on sex discrimination at Columbia University with Ginsburg during her time there. She remembers the example her colleague set at home.

For the last class in the fall of 1979, Moses invited all the students to dinner in their apartment. «Marty, Ruth`s husband, and I were cooking in the kitchen while we taught the class,» Moses recalls. «It was a great way to end a seminar on gender discrimination!» Joan Bertin explains: «I`m still a feminist!» She believes that her experience as a women`s rights activist will benefit her today in her work with the National Coalition Against Censorship. Read more>> Brenda Feigen published her memoir, Not One of the Boys: Living Life as a Feminist, and currently practices entertainment law in Los Angeles. Read more>> Deb Ellis, a WRP attorney in the mid-`80s, praises Ginsburg`s tactic of occasionally using male plaintiffs in equality-protection cases, including Frontiero, to show that gender differences hurt men and women — indeed, entire families. Sharron Frontiero`s husband, Joseph, was not eligible for spousal benefits arising from his work in the armed forces in uniform because he could not prove that he was economically dependent on his wife, a condition that was not required for wives of male members to be entitled to the same benefits. While some would have focused solely on the injustice such rules cause to women, Ginsburg dismissed differential treatment based on gender as inherently detrimental to everyone involved. Jill Goodman also sought equal treatment for women in the military, though she initially approached the job with discomfort. «I grew up in an anti-war era,» she says. «We weren`t just against the war. We were anti-military. But I learned from our complainants the role of the military, not only in society, but also in the personal lives of citizens.

In 2001, in Ferguson v. City of Charleston (off-site), 532 U.S. 67 (2001), the court found in a statement approved by Ginsburg Judge that a public hospital`s policy of testing all pregnant patients for cocaine in the urine of all pregnant patients and reporting positive results to police violated the Fourth Amendment. The hospital argued that the policy was motivated by a particular need to protect the health of the fetus. (WRP and the Reproductive Freedom Project filed a court friend brief in the case.) Susan Deller Ross considers her current work for women`s rights in Africa «in the spirit of the ACLU`s Women`s Rights Project.» She is Director of the International Women`s Human Rights Clinic at Georgetown University Law Center after working in the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Under her guidance, students will address domestic violence, trafficking of women and girls, domestic slavery, gendered divorce laws, female genital mutilation, and many other cases of institutionalized male dominance in African countries. Ross describes his students` work as «just like the first cases of sex discrimination under our constitution.» Read more>> This tradition continued later. Joan Bertin gave birth to two children during her fifteen years with the WRP from 1979 to 1994, which she calls the «ACLU babies». She had a cot and a baby swing in her office and sometimes took nursing breaks day and night. Bertin considered the configuration a «very workable compromise.» But not everyone at the ACLU shared that view. Ross remembers hearing other people complain, «When we took our babies to work, they should be able to bring their dogs.» Dorothy Kenyon was appointed to the League of Nations Committee on the Legal Status of Women from 1938 to 1940 and was the first U.S.

delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women from 1947 to 1950. From 1939 to 1940, she was a judge in New York and claimed the title for life. «Judge Kenyon» later wrote the ACLU`s amicus curiae letter in Hoyt v. Florida, 386 U.S. 57 (1961), a Supreme Court case that considered (and denied) a challenge to a state law requiring men to serve on juries, but excluding women unless they volunteered. Influenced by her own experiences as a black woman, she made connections between the legal status of women and that of African Americans, using the term «Jane Crow» in her scholarship. She joined the ACLU`s Equality Committee, where she urged the organization to focus on gender discrimination and use the Constitution to challenge it.