Ruth Bader Ginsburg: 5 Male Justices Have A 'Blind Spot' On Women's Issues

[theHandpuppet]

Source: Huffington Post

Posted: 07/31/2014

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said Thursday in an interview on Yahoo News that five men on the court have a "blind spot" when it comes to discrimination against women.

The five conservative justices last month ruled in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., that closely held for-profit corporations can refuse for religious reasons to cover contraception in their health insurance plans. Ginsburg, the two other women on the court and Justice Stephen Breyer dissented with the majority opinion, arguing that allowing some employers to choose what kinds of health coverage their women employees receive is a form of discrimination.

Asked by Katie Couric whether the five male justices fully understood the ramifications of their decision, Ginsburg replied, "I would have to say no."

"It's a little bit like the Pregnancy Discrimination Act -- not getting a simple point," Ginsburg said, referring to a 2009 decision in which the majority ruled that women cannot receive retirement credit for maternity leave taken before the law was passed in 1978. "But justices continue to think and can change."


Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/31/ginsburg-hobby-lobby_n_5636254.html

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She's still a helluva lot more optimistic than I am, that's for sure.

[hedgehog]

1. Where's Lysistrata when we need her?

[theHandpuppet]

2. I'm not so sure I agree with Ginsburg on one point

She believes the 5 Neanderpiggies didn't really comprehend the ramifications of their decision. I think they did but just didn't give a damn. Of course, if you take another perspective on what Justice Ginsburg said, then she was politely inferring that they were too stupid to understand their own ruling. Now that I could buy.

[valerief]

3. They have a "don't give flying fuck spot" on issues affecting the 99%. nt

[theHandpuppet]

4. Good point.

It looks as if we're stuck not with three blind mice but five blind rats.

[Raster]

7. Thumbs Up!

[Sunlei]

5. She explains here- Ruth Bader Ginsburg on breaking legal ground for women.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg on breaking legal ground for women, her first case before the Supreme Court, and her husband's support.

http://www.makers.com/ruth-bader-ginsburg?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000046

[DRoseDARs]

6. Oh it's not a blindspot, they just keep looking in the kitchen...

...and are constantly surprised (dismayed?) when they don't find the women there.

[Gothmog]

8. Scalia has been going senile for some time now

The fact that Scalia has a blind spot should surprise no one

[davidpdx]

11. I hope his next blind spot is under a mound of dirt

the sooner the better.

[blkmusclmachine]

9. Can we put an end to the fiction that Kennedy is some kind of "moderate"???

[theHandpuppet]

13. I'm not sure how he got that reputation.

I've never thought of him as a moderate.

[Jim Lane]

16. Well, there's DOMA, and marriage equality in general.

Kennedy is more accurately thought of as a swing vote than a moderate. He's a conservative but is somewhat less doctrinaire than his four colleagues. He will (in, admittedly, a minority of cases) disagree with them, and provide the crucial fifth vote that the four liberals need.

An obvious example is United States v. Windsor. By a 5-4 vote, Kennedy and the four liberals held that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to withhold benefits (Social Security, etc.) from same-sex couples who were legally married under state law.

That decision did not, by itself, establish marriage equality nationwide. It was, however, immediately beneficial to quite a few married same-sex couples around the country. Furthermore, the logic of the opinion (written by Kennedy) was not the narrow ground of federalism, holding that laws concerning marriage were traditionally the province of the states and that the federal government had to defer to each state's law. Instead, Kennedy based the decision on the Equal Protection Clause. That's why Scalia, in dissent, argued (correctly, as it turned out) that Kennedy's opinion "arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition."

If Kennedy had stayed with the conservatives in Windsor, I doubt that we would have seen the wave of lower-court decisions that have brought marriage equality to many additional states.

[dem in texas]

10. So many men equate birth control for women to viagra for men

they think women want birth control so they can go out and screw like crazy and not worry about getting pregnant. they have no idea of the toll pregnancy takes on a woman's body and health, not to mention how hard it is to raise a child. So sad that we have five supreme court justices that are so ignorant about women's health needs.

[theHandpuppet]

14. Is it that they don't know or don't care?

Probably both.

[BlancheSplanchnik]

15. there are women who think that way too.

Hateful religious or libertarian types--either way, (I've seen both), they're self-righteous and hateful conservafascists.

[Arugula Latte]

12. It's not a blind spot -- it's wilfull. They are Opus Dei Psycho-Catholics.