My Own Words by Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Don’t quite recall if I read this one before or after she died, but it’s really just essential reading for anyone who has any interest whatsoever in the Supreme Court, law, and women’s rights. Her story is just so remarkable it’s almost hard to fathom, how this tiny little powerhouse muscled her way into the inner sanctum of the profession, and she never compromised herself or her beliefs along the way. She was just simply herself — brilliant, kind, funny, even-keeled and dedicated to making sure that women would never be left behind. This book isn’t so much an autobiography as it is a compilation of stories and speeches, compiled by two of her associates (?), I think. Her friendship with Judge Scalia — her ideological opposite and part-time sparring partner in the court — should be a lesson for all of us in civility in how to get along with people who don’t believe what we believe. I really wish she was still around as we need people like her to help guide us through these troubled times. But the book will have to do.

• 1956 women were less than 3 percent of the legal profession in the US and only one woman had served on the federal appellate court
• mother in law: “In every good marriage, it helps sometimes to be a little deaf.”
• when a thoughtless or unkind word is spoken, best tune out — reacting in anger or annoyance will not advances ones ability to persuade
• courts main trust is to repair fractures in federal law, to step in when other courts have disagreed on what the relevant federal law requires
• most people in poverty in the US and the world over are women and children
• during the mccarthy era — “We were betraying our most fundamental values, and two, that legal skills could help make things better, could help to challenge what was going on” motivated her to head to law school
• when attempt to prevent certain forms of behavior may place individual rights and liberties in peril, the criminal sanction should be saved as a last resort
• restraints on individual rights in the field of individual privacy, morality and conscience can be a cure worse than the disease
• law cannot apply one rule to Joe who is a good man, and another to John, who is a hardened criminal
• 2015 — court upheld lethal injection, permissible means of carrying out the death penalty — she dissented, asked the question of whether the death penalty is unconstitutional
• reliability or accuracy — exonerated after the fact? arbitrariness — race and geography
• matter of time — average execution occurs some 18 years later after the individual was sentenced to death
• multiple opportunities for appeal available to prisoners sentenced to death
• incidence of death penalty has steeply declined
• 1972–76, no executions took place in the US
• Scalia and me — different on questions of major import but one in our reverence for the institution we serve
• collegiality of that sort is what makes it possible for the court to do the ever challenging work the const. and congress assign to us
• John Strand play The Originalist — fixed meaning canon = works must be given the meaning they had when the legal text was adopted — Scalia, attributed
• such is the character of human language, that no word conveys to the mind, in all situations, one single idea … — John Marshall
• Scalia homed in on the soft spots and gave me just the stimulation i needed to strengthen the courts decisions
• Scalia “i attack ideas. i don’t attack people. some very good people have some very bad ideas. and if you can’t separate the two, you gotta get another day job. you don’t want to be a judge. at least not a judge on a multi member panel”
• const. we serve is far more important than the particular individuals who compose the courts hence at any given time
• our charge is to pursue justice as best we can
• belva ann lockwood — first woman to gain admission to the courts bar, first woman to argue a case before the justices, first woman to run the full course for prez — 1870's
• 1879 — congress decreed that an woman possessing the necessary qualifications shall on motion be admitted to practice before the court
• she helped to secure a 5M reward for eastern cherokee indians whose ancestral lands had been taken from them without just compensation
• though she could not vote for prez, she twice ran for office herself, pointing out that nothing in the const. barred a woman candidacy
• “we shall never have equal rights until we take them, not equal respect until we command it”
• 1869 — iowa’s arabella mansfield became the first female to gain admission to the practice of law — same year st. louis law school became the fist in the nation to open doors to women
• in the early 60’s, women accounted for about 3 perfect of the nations lawyers — today, ranks have increased tenfold to about 30 percent of the bar
• in the law schools, women filled between 3 and 4.5 percent of seats each academic year from 1947–1967; today, women are almost 50 percent of all law students and over 50 percent of the associates at law firms
• today women account for roughly 19 percent of law school deans, 25 percent of tenured professors , and about 35 percent of law faculty members overall
• Kagan: women lawyers still lag far behind men on most measures of success
• 1949 — Truman decided the time was not ripe for a justice — a woman as a justice would make it difficult for other justices to meet uniformly with robes, and perhaps shoes off, shirt, collars unbuttoned and discuss their problems and come to decisions … no sanitary arrangements for a female justice
• Carter appointed a barrier breaking number of women — 40 — to lifetime federal judgeships
• Reagan appointed OConnor and 28 women to other federal courts
• first president bush appointed 36, clinton 104
• women contribute a distinctive medley of views influenced by differences in biology, cultural impact and life exerpeince
• system of justice is surely richer for the diversity of background and experience of its judges — poorer when nearly all of its participants were cut from the same mold
• judah benjamin — declined nomination in 1853, first acknowledged Jew to hold a US senate seat
• was AG, secretary of war and then state for Jefferson Davis — enemies called him Judas Iscariot Benjamin
• british barrister at age 55, produced a work in england that came to be known as benjamin on sales
• rose to the top of the legal profession twice in one lifetime, on two continents, beginning his first ascent as a raw youth and his second as a fugitive minister of a vanquished nation
• Louis Brandeis — first jew on the court, 1916–1939, helped to promote the pro bono tradition, staunch supporter of women suffrage
• one of his colleagues, james clark mc reynolds, was openly anti semitic, refused to it next to brandeis
• Brandeis elaborated the canons of judicial restraint more powerfully than any other jurist, cautioning judges to be ever on guard against erecting our prejudices into legal principles
• architect, of the const. right to privacy and modern jurisprudence of free speech
• ardent zionist — Jews comfortably situated in the US had an obligation to help their kinsmen build their new land
• law as a protector of the oppressed, the poor, the minority, the loner, evident in the life body of work
• zedek, zedek, tirdof — justice justice shalt thou pursue — ever present reminders of what judges must do that they may thrive
• early justices sat in DC togetherness day and night helped to secure institutional authority of the nascent, underfunded court
• Harlan — had in his collection the inkstand from Taney when he ruled on the Dred Scott (held that no person descended from a slave could ever be a citizen of the US, and that the due process clause safeguarded one person right to hold another in bondage) decision; he strongly dissented in the 1857 case
• during the civil rights cases in 1883, struck down the Act of 1875, an act that congress had passed to advance equal treatment without regard to race in various public accommodations — Harlan dissented
• he had a hard time writing his dissent so his wife retrieved the ink stand for him and then he finished — cool story
• Nellie Taft (wife of William) — founded and was for several years the prez of the cinci orchestra
• also introduced cherry blossoms in DC
• first lady to ride with prez on inauguration day and the first lady to not only dive in a car but drive one herself
• Reed vs Reed — 1971 first time in history the court invalidated a sex based statute under the equal protection clause
• women rights project, she was coordinator, general council to the ACLU
• wrote a casebook called Sex Based Discrimination: Text, Cases and Materials — became important resource for students and professors in the rapidly proliferating women and law courses at law schools across the nation
• 25 legal articles in the 70’s, on gender equality law that she herself did so much to shape
• Thurgood Marshall of the women’s movement
• Kirstein v. University of Virginia — is the first decision to declare unconstitutional exclusion of women from educational opportunities afforded to men by a state institution
• points toward a reassessment of the application of the equal protection clause to women in other areas
• Seidenberg v McSorley’s Old Ale House, court declared unconstitutional. under the clause a saloons 115 year old practice of catering only to men
• court concluded that the discrimination was without foundation in reason
• ACLU had its first sex deiscrminiation/equal protection case in the US supremembe court, Reed vs. reed
• Moritz case — to have been denied the laws equal protection reversed the tax court and allowed moritx his $600 deduction
• fueled her early 70’s career shift from diligent academic to enormously skilled and successful appellate
• Moritz case furnished the litigation agenda ruth actively pursued until she joined the DC circuit in 1980
• wrote a brief on behalf of the ACLU for the Frontiero case — legislative line drawing based on sex should, like race classifications, be labeled suspect so the court should extend to legal distinction based on gender the same strict scrutiny — the justices in the early 70’s, reserved and still give to race based legal distinctions
• ACLU and Frontiero’s attorneys joined together to submit the final brief in the states
• equal protection — reflected the fundamental notion that legislative distinctions should not be made on the basis of characteristics that bear no necessary relationship to ability and over which no persons have control
• she lost the battle for designating sex as a suspect classification but won the case
• in subsequent cases, coaxed the justices into articulating an intermediate standard of review for sex discrimination cases
• craig vs. bowen — new standard proved potent enough to invalidate most of the many federal and state laws that drew a sharp line between the sexes
• 1972 — Equal Rights Amendment passed both branches — provision was modeled on the 19th amendment which granted women the right to vote — equality of rights under law shall not be denied or abridged by the US or by any state on account of sex
• 1982 the ERA died three states short
• 2014 — “I would like my granddaughters when they pick up the const. to see that notion, that women and men are persons of equal stature. id like them to see that is a basic principle of our society.”
• 1973 argument — arizona law stipulates that the governor, sec of state and treasurer must be male
• Georgia — the husband is the head of the family and a wife is subject to him; any charge or intimation against a white female of having sexual intercourse with a person of color is slanderous without proof of special damages
• amendment will force prompt consideration of changes that are long overdue
• until the 19th amendment, women could be denied the right to vote
• Harlan Fiske Stone — “Why doesn’t columbia admit women? We don’t because we don’t.” 1922
• extension rather than invalidation of laws that benefit only one sex is a route recently traveled by the supreme court
• equal rights amendment will occasion no changes whatever in current support law for wives
• does not force anyone happy as a housewife to relinquish that role
• enhances that role by making it plain that it was chosen, not thrust on her without regard to her preference
• women who wish to enlist must meet considerably higher standards than men
• 1948 — Eisenhower “i am convinced that in another war they have got to be drafted just like the men”
• amendment will impel the comprehensive legislative revision that neither congress nor the states have undertaken to date
• dedicate the nation to a new view of the rights and responsibilities of men and women
• rejects sharp legislative lines between the sexes as constitutionally tolerable
• each person will be judged on the basis of individual merit and not on the basis of an unalterable trait of birth that bears no necessary relationship to need or ability
• VMI case — sole single sex school among virginias public institutions of higher learning
• some women, at least, can meet the physical standards VMI imposes on men, are capable of all the activities required of VMI cadets, prefer VMI’s methodology over VMIL’s, could be educated using VMI’s methodology, and would want to attend VMI if they had the chance
• question is whether VA can constitutionally deny to women who have the will and capacity the training and attendant opportunities VMI uniquely affords, training and opportunities VMIL does not apply
• invalid — incompatible with equal rights protection, a law or official policy that denies to women simply because they are women, equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society based upon what they can do
• Mississippi University for Women v Hogan — state actors may not close entrance gates based on fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females
• const. is over 220 years old, oldest written const. still in force in the world
• except for the 19th amendment, no express provisi9on regarding discrimination on the basis of gender
• 14th — equal protection of the laws
• 1971 — justices began to respond favorably to the arguments of equal rights advocates who urged a more encompassing interpretation of the equality principle
• sought to advance, simultaneously, public understanding, legislative change, change in judicial doctrine
• statute books — husband is the head of the family, he may chose any reasonable place or mode of living and the wife must conform thereto
• our mission was to educate along with the public, decision makers in the nations legislatures and courts
• tried to convey to them that something was wrong with their perception of the world
• audience — largely of men of a certain age
• spark understanding that their own daughters and granddaughters could be disadvantaged by the way things were
• Reed case — court unanimously declared idaho’s male preference statute unconstitutional a plain denial to Sally Reed of equal protection of the states law
• Frontiero v Richardson — court held it unconstitutional to deny female military officers a housing allowance and medical benefits covering their husbands on the same automatic basis as those family benefits were given to married male military officers
• court then declared unconstitutional an iowa law allowing a parent to stop supporting a daughter once she reached the age of 18 but requiring parental support for son until he turned 21
• Weinberger v Wiesenfeld — using sex as a convenient shorthand to indicate financial need or willingness to bring up a baby did not comply with the equal protection princi9ple, as the court had grown to understand that principle
• and what was once a widowed mothers benefit became and remains a widowed parents benefit
• 1976, Craig v boren — court struck down an OK statue that allowed young women to purchase near beer at age 18 but required young men to wait until they turned 21 to buy the same
• judges read newspapers, are affected by the climate of the era
• 1961–1971, womens employment outside of the home expanded rapidly and the feminist movement
• 1970’s for the first time, the average woman was experiencing most of her adult years in a household not dominated by child care responsibilities
• court helped to ensure that laws and regulations would catch up with a changed world
• US vs VA — state had a choice it could admit women to VMI or close the school
• VMI case as a culmination of the 70’s endeavor to open doors so that women could aspire to and achieve without artificial costraints
• Rose Garden Acceptance Speech
• Clinton “Throughout her life, she has repeatedly stood for the individual, the person less well off, the outsider in society, and has given those people greater hope by telling them that they have a place in our legal system by giving them a sense that the const. and the laws protect all american people, not simply the powerful
• Rehnqist — a judge is bound to decide each case fairly, in accord with the relevant facts and the applicable law, even when the decision is, as he put it, not the one the home crowd wants
• Holmes “intellectual honesty about the available policy choices; disciplined self restraint in respecting the majority policy choice; principled commitment to defense of individual autonomy, even in the face of majority action
• opening statement of hearings
• Judge Learned Hand — “the spirit of liberty that imbues our const. must lie first and foremost in the hearts of the men and women who compose this great nation
• the controversies that come to the court as the last judicial resort, touch and concern the health and wellbeing of our nation and its people
• they affect the preservation of liberty to ourselves and our posterity
• judiciary is third in line and it is placed apart from the political fray so that its members can judge fairly, impartially, in accordance with the law, and without fear about the animosity of any pressure group
• Hamilton — “judges is to secure a steady, upright, and impartial administration of the laws”
• Cardozo “justice is not to be taken by storm, she is to be wooed by slow advances”
• justices continuously confront matters on which the framers left things unsaid, unsettled or uncertain
• judges in our system are bound to decide concrete cases, not abstract issues
• Frank Griffin, ireland justice “courtesy to and consideration for ones colleagues, the legal profession, and the public are among the greatest attributes a judge can have”
• most of the worlds nations have a judicial system — US has fifty two systems
• cases presenting what we call deep splits — questions of federal law on which other courts have strongly disagreed — about 70 percent of the cases we hear fall into that category
• in all, court currently receives between 6 to 7K requests for review annually
• success — dissent from a denial of review is never published, because the draft dissent leads one or more justices to rethink the matter and supply the vote or votes necessary to grant review
• with elimination of the courts mandatory jurisdiction in 1988, courts clear recognition that it ought not to try to serve as an error correction instance, the controversies the court calendars for argument have diminished in number from about 140 per term to between 70 and 80
• court more often than not rules together, 5–4 is about 25 percent of the time
• Justice Robert Jackson — “we are not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final”
• i prefer to continue to aim for opinions that both get it right and keep it tight, without undue digressions or decorations or distracting denunciations of colleagues who hold different views
• we remain good friends, people who respect each other and genuinely enjoy each others company
• institution we serve is ever so much more important than the particular individuals who compose the courts bench at any given time
• we serve no client, our commission is to do what is right, what the law requires and what is just
• judicial independence is vulnerable to assault, it can be shattered if the society law exists to serve does not take care to ensure its preservation
• roosevelt wanted to pack the court — defeat of his plan was a groundswell of public opposition to the endeavor, and the growing understanding among the justices that it was appropriate to defer to legislative judgements on matters of coral and economic policy
• packing the court to suit the mood of the political branches would severely erode the status of the judiciary as a co-equal branch of government
• Aharon Barak former prez of the supreme court of israel “democracy is not only majority rule, democracy is also the rule of basic values, values upon which the whole democratic structure is built, and which even the majority cannot touch
• judges in most states, at least at some levels are chosen in periodic elections
• how can a judge resist doing what the home crowd wants
• Bruce Fein/Burt Neuborne “judicial independence in the US strengthens ordered liberty, domestic tranquillity, rule of law, democratic ideas … it would be folly to squander this priceless consitutiaonl gift to placate the clamors of benighted political partisans
• effective judge — strives to persuade and not to pontificate — hamilton
• speaks in a moderate and restrained voice, engaging in dialogue with not a diatribe against, coequal department of government, state authorities and even her own colleagues
• Thurgood — “framers had a distinctly limited vision of those who counted among we the people”
• fathers — culture held them back from fully perceiving or acting upon ideals of human equality and dignity
• John Marshall — established the practice of announcing judgements in a single opinion of the court
• place no formal limit on the prerogatives of each judge to speak out separately
• system of justice is so secure, we can tolerate open displays of disagreement among jusdges about what the law is
• dangers to the system are posed by two tendencies — too frequent resort to separate opinions and the immoderate tone of statements diverging from the position of the courts majority
• Brandeis — it is more important that that applicable rule of law be settled than that it be settled right
• the most effective dissent, i am convinced, stands on its own legal footing, it spells out differences without jeopardizing collegiality or public respect for and confidence in the judiciary
• effective opinion writing does not require a judge to upbraid colleagues for failing to see the light or to get it right
• Roe decision might have been less of a storm center had it both homed in more precisely on the women equality dimension of the issue and correspondingly attempted nothing more bold at that time than the mode of deicsinmaking the court emp9loyed in the 70’s gender classification cases
• 1971–1982 court held unconstitutional. as violative of due process or equal protection constraints, a series of state and federal laws that differentiated explicitly on th basis of sex
• backdrop for these rulings was a expansion from 1961–1971 of womens employment outside the home
• civil rights movement and precedents, revived feminist movement, book called The Second Sex
• court, in effect, opened a dialogue with the political branches of government, instructed congress and state legislatures rethink ancient positions on these questions
• classifications must bar refined, adopted for remedial purposes, and not rooted in prejudice about the way women or men are
• courts decrees removed no benefits — extended to a woman workers husband, widowed or family benefits congress had authorized only for members of a male workers family
• court helped to ensure that laws an regulations would catch up with a changed world
• Roe invited no dialogue with legislators — seemed entirely to remove the ball from their court
• marked trend in state legislatures toward liberalization of abortion statutes
• decision left virtually no sate with laws fully conforming to the courts delineation of abortion regulation still permissible
• vocal right to life movement rallied and succeeded
• Brown decision — prospects in 1954 for state legislation dismantling racially segregated schools were bleak
• when blacks were confined b law to a separate sector, there was no similar prospect for educating the white majority
• brown was not altogether a bold decision — marshall careful set the steppingstones leading up to the landmark ruling
• court concentrated on segregated schools, left the follow up for other days and future cases
• 1967 — Loving vs. VA — separate but equal was dead, everywhere and anywhere within the governance of the US
• justices generally follow, they do not lead, changes taking place elsewhere
• court reinforce or signals a green light for a social change
• Roe — on the other hand, halted a political process that was moving in a reform direction and thereby, i believe, prolonged divisiveness and deferred stable settlement of the issue
• founding generation recognized what becoming part of the world nations meant that what we do would be watched in other lands — meant that we would become a participant in the formulation, recognition and enforcement of international law
• John Jay, first chief — by taking a place among the nations of earth, the US had become amenable to the law of nations — international law
• Marshall — law of nations which binds US courts and the law and judicial decisions of foreign countries, which do not
• international law is part of our law, foreign law is not
• we can be informed by how jurists abroad have resolved problems resembling those we face
• Reed — referred to two foreign decisions, both were rulings of then west german const. courts
• post brown, time magazine “in many countries, where US prestige and leadership have been damaged by the fact of US segregation, it will come as a timely reassertion of the basic american princ9ple that all men are created equal
• womens rights project — gained courage and inspiration from the litigation compaign that led to and followed brown — copied the strategy of educating judicial audiences in measured movements, in ways digestible by and palatable to the decisionmakers
• brown both reflected and propelled the development of human rights protection internationally
• propelled an evolution yet unfinished toward respect in law and practice, for the human dignity of ll the worlds people
• Loving case — there can be no doubt the chief wrote for a unified court, that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of r racial classification violates the central meaning of the equal protection clause
• deprived the lovings of liberty without due process
• last state to rid of miscegenation was alabama in 2000, today 4.3M interracial couples reside in the US
• 1969 Nixons labor department produced Phily Plan — required construction enterprises that held contracts with the government to set goals and titles for hiring minority workers
• enterprises that failed to comply risked termination of their contracts
• model was extended to cover the whole of the US and all government contracts, including those held by universities
• Griggs vs Duke power, 1971, court ruled that title VII outlawed not only discrimination but also practices fair in form, but discriminatory in operation, that had separate impact on minority groups members or women
• employwers had to examine their employment practices and eliminate requirements that screened out minorities and women
• 1978 Regents of U of CA v Bakke = outright quotas or reservations of a set number of places for minority group students are unconstitutional
• Parents Involved in Xommunmity Schools vs. Seattle School District no 1 — the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race
• she dissented “legal and practical difference between the use of race conscious criteria to keep the races apart and the use of race conscious criteria to bring the races together
• O Connor “to cultivate leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, the path to leadership must be visibly open to the talented individuals of every race and ethnicity”
• graveyard dissents — those that are buried
• opinion appealing to the intelligence of a future day — Justice Ben Curtis dissent in Red Scott — at the founding of he nation, african americas were citizens of at least 5 states, and so in every sense part of the people of the US, thus among those for whom and whose posterity the const. was ordained and established
• Harlan dissent in civil rights cases “there cannot be in this republic any class of human beings in practical subjection to another class”
• some dissent looks for immediate action from the political branches of government congress and the prez/dissents of this order aim to engage or energize the public and propel prompt legislation overruling of the courts decision
• 2007 — Ledbetter v goodyear “the ball is in congress’s court, she wrote, to correct the courts parsimonious reading of title vii
• bills were introduced in hose and senate to amend title vii to make it plain that each paycheck a woman in ledbeters situation received renewed the discrimination and restarted the time within which suit could be brought
• Walmart vs. Dukes, 2011 — observed, in dissent, that managers had wide discretion in deciding on pay and promotions/managers were overwhelmingly male and they tended perhaps uncounsoucsly, to favor people who looked like themselves
• Ledbetter — in our view, the court does not comprehend, or is indifferent to, the insidious way in which women can be victims of pay discrimination
• vance v ball state — courts disregard for the realities of the workplace means that many victims of workplace harassment will have no effective remedy
• Shelby v holder 2013 — throwing out preclearance when it has worked and is continuing to work is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet
• congress found in second generation barriers demonstrative evidence that a remedy as strong as preclearance remains vital and should not be removed from the federal arsenal
• it was the judgement of congress that 40 years has not been a sufficient amount of time to eliminate the vestiges of discrimination following nearly 100 years of disregard for the dictates of the 15th amendment
• Fisher v texas, 2013 — texas’ top 10 percent law requires p9ublic universities to admit any graduate of a texas high school ranked in the top 10 percent of their class
• is it not blindness to race br race consoucsess instead, that drives percentage lans such as the one texas has adopted?
• those that candidly disclose their consideration of race are preferable to those that conceal or obscure what drives them
• National Federation of Independent Business v Sebelius — although the commerce clause did not authorize congress to enact the individual mandate, another const. granted congressional power, the power to lay and collect taxes, did provide the necessary authorization (majority)
• not so the ACA’s inducement to get states to adopt the ACA’s medicaid expansion, which was declared unconstitutional
• if the government can compel people to buy insurance, then there is no commodity the government can’t force people to purchase, so the argument goes
• without the mandate to acquire insurance, covering those with preexisting conditions would trigger a death spiral in the health insurance market
• with the mandate, access to insurance would be available and and uncompensated are would be hugely redduced
• ACA supplies a federal response to a need the states are incapable of meeting
• according to the chief, congress established a wholly new program alongside old medicaid and coerced the states to accept new medicaid
• medicaid is a single program with but one constant aim — enable poor persons to receive basic health care when they need it
• the expansion adds more people, all of them poor, to the medicaid eligible population, congress did not otherwise change the operation of the program
• this court has many times explained that when it confronts a statute marred by a const infirmity, its endeavor must be to salvage, not demolish the legalization
• a wise legal scholar famously said of the first amendments free s peec guarantee “your right to swing your arms ends just where the other persons nose begins”
• the difference between a community of believers in the same religion and a business embracing persons of diverse beliefs is slighted in today’s decision (Burwell v Hobby Lobby)
• agree in unison that RFRA gives Hobby Lobby and Conestoga no right to opt out of prescription coverage
• working for hobby lobby or conestoga should not deprive employees holding different beliefs of the employer insured preventative care available to workers at the shop next door
• todays potentially sweeping deacons minimizes the governments compelling interest in uniform compliance with laws governing workplace, in particular the ACA
• discounts the advantages religion based opt outs impose on others, in particular, employee who do not share their employers religious beliefs
• Gonzalez v Planned parenthood, 2007 — upheld partial birth abortaioon act of 2003, which criminalized D and E
• courts opinion tolerates, even applauds, federal intervention to ban nationwide a procedure found necessary and proper in certain cases by the am college of obstetricians and gynecologists
• fo the fist time since Roe, court blesses a prohibition with no exception protecting a womans health
• court shields women by denying them any choice in the manner
• partial birth abortions ban act, and the courts defense of it, cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to womens lives