We join the nation in mourning the loss of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
She fought throughout her long career for fairness – for women, for LGBTQ individuals, for people of color, in short, for all those who needed her voice to provide them a fair chance at the freedoms we proclaim as our nation’s commitment.
Now it is time for us to lift our voices. Justice Ginsburg dictated her last wish to her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.”
She tried to fulfill that wish by holding onto life with the grit and determination that she brought to every other obstacle life put in her way. The determination to rise to the top of law school classes not yet welcoming of women and the grit to persuade a male-dominated judiciary of the inalienable right of women to equal treatment under the law.
Her resolve never seemed to waver. Not in moments of personal grief, like the loss of her beloved husband, nor when speaking truth to power from her position on the Supreme Court. Often, she was able to harness her tenacity and legal brilliance to bring members of the Court to fair and just rulings and, when she couldn’t do that, she penned dissents that will provide us with a vision for many years of where the law should be. This time, her grit didn’t quite get her where she wanted to be. It’s our job now to see her last wish fulfilled.
The Supreme Court currently has in its hands the fate of the Affordable Care Act, including Medicaid Expansion, which has made health insurance available to millions of individuals and families for the first time. And many more significant health care cases are close behind, including whether women have a right to the full range of reproductive health care and whether the law that guarantees health care to Medicaid enrollees can be enforced in court. The stakes are too high!
The voice of the people who will be most impacted by those decisions should be heard in November before Justice Ginsburg is replaced. Let’s lift our voices to make sure that all of those voices can be heard.
