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Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been turned down by many law firms after her graduation. The law firms she had applied for all discriminated against her gender and her identity as a Jew. Though she was offered some jobs, she declined simply due to the fact that her wages were much lower than the male workers.

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She then decided that it would be a better choice for her to not go through any law firms, but enter a District Court instead, where she had been forcefully accepted into by her supporting professor, Gerald Gunther.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg was offered a position as Edmund L. Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to be his law clerk in 1959 when her former professor Gerald Gunther convinced the Lawyer to replace her with a male if her position as a woman did not work out.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg starts clerking for Edmund Louis Palmieri
Ruth Bader Ginsburg had a rough start in her career. Gender inequality at the time was so bad in the workplace that her outstanding academic record was not even enough to help her find any jobs. This was until a favorite Columbia professor explicitly refused to recommend any other graduates from Columbia, before U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri hired Ginsburg as a clerk. Ginsburg clerked under Judge Palmieri for two years.

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What job offers did Ruth Bader Ginsburg receive after clerking?
After becoming a law clerk, because of her work with Edmund Louis Palmieri, she was able to be offered some opportunities with jobs at law firms. However, because of the gender inequality, she always received a much lower salary than her coworkers who were in the same position, however were male.

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What did Ruth Bader Ginsburg do after clerking?
After clerking for two years, she took some time to go after her other legal passion, which is civil procedure. This is why she chose to go back to Columbia and join the Project on International Civil Procedure. This project made her interested in the Swedish culture, as it was where she lived abroad, to do research for her book on Swedish Civil Procedure practices. When she returned to the United States, she was accepted a job to be professor at Rutgers University Law School in 1963. She held this position until she accepted an offer that was given to her to teach at Columbia in 1972.

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How did her other co-workers view her?
Ginsburg especially was considered an outsider at the time, and Meltsner recalled several colleagues who voiced doubt, or at least ambivalence, about offering her tenure. Before her appointment at Columbia, Ginsburg was a tenured professor at Rutgers Law School. Offering her immediate tenure at Columbia was therefore a necessity, Meltsner said.

Justice Elena Kagan
“Ruth reached out to encourage and assist me in my career as she did for so many others, long before I came to the Supreme Court,” Kagan said. “And she guided and inspired me, on matters large and small, once I became her colleague. I will miss her - her intellect, her generosity, her sly wit, her manifest integrity, and her endless capacity for work - for the rest of my life.” (1970)

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What did she teach at Columbia as a professor?

Ginsburg also introduced the Law School’s first Sex Discrimination Law course and seminar into the curriculum, to train future women’s rights advocates. (1970’s)

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Aryeh Neier starts Women's Rights Project in the ACLU.
In 1970, Aryeh Neier became the executive director of the ACLU. His first decision was the establishment of a Women's Rights Project. His wife was the main influence on his decision to make this project because she was also discriminated against in the workplace. Another influence on his decision was that the feminist movement had been reborn in the late 1960s, and he wanted the make ACLU a part of it and help the movement in litigation. He believed that helping and promoting the feminist movement, that might pave a way for women’s rights to be improved. Once the ACLU had endorsed the project, the WRP had to make a plan to raise money for the project.

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Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Women's Rights Project.
In 1972, RBG had become a part of the team for the ACLU’s Women’s Right Project. RBG wanted to help change creative laws in America to make more equality and equity for women and their rights. In the 70s for America, gender was heavily involved in making lots of different things. Women were discriminated against in almost all areas of life. The WRP wanted to change these ways and protect women. The WRP aimed at women as a whole in America, which revolved around changing laws that discriminated against women.

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When did she start pursuing her career as a professor?

In 1972 when Ginsburg joined the Columbia Law School faculty, she co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) Women’s Rights Project in order to challenge laws that treated the sexes differently. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first female tenure professor at Columbia Law School. Which is only one of the many successes that she has accomplished throughout her years. Despite her background of being born in Brooklyn, she developed a powerful voice as a strategic litigator, teacher, feminist, scholar, judge, and advocate for gender equality not just within the courtroom, but beyond.

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Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld case (What was it about?)
During the time at ACLU Ruth Bader Ginsburg had worked on a case named Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld. The case was about the benefits of social security. A man named Stephen Wiesenfeld applied for social security benefits for himself and his son, but unfortunately, his son was able to receive them but not him. He had become a widower after his wife, Paula, had passed away from childbirth. Paula had worked as a teacher and her salary was the principle of the couple’s income. In 1972, Paula died in childbirth, which left Wiesenfeld a widower and the care for his newborn son. Social benefits were only being given to widows and not widowers. In 1973, Wiesenfeld sued on behalf not only himself but for other widowers in the same situation. He argued that the social security benefits were discriminating by gender and that it was not fair.

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Who were her co-workers?

Cases where Meltsner and Ginsburg worked together:

Meltsner said Ginsburg was working on a brief for Frontiero v. Richardson, a case in which Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, sought a dependent’s allowance for her husband. At the time, federal law required husbands to depend upon their military wives for at least half of their support in order to receive dependent status. Wives of military husbands, however, did not have to meet the same requirement. (1973)

“It was one of the cases she won that dramatically changed American law,” Meltsner said.

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When was Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld case fought?
In December 1972, Stephen Wiesenfeld had written a letter to the editor of a local newspaper in New Jersey, which made Ruth Bader Ginsburg recognize him and called Wiesenfeld shortly after. Then in February 1973, Ruth Bader Ginsburg had filed a case in federal court in Trenton. Then finally in January 1975, it was fought in the Supreme court. Stephen Wiesenfeld himself wrote, “It was March 19, 1975, and she had to pull over to find a payphone to give me the news: the United State Supreme Court had ruled in our favor, deciding I was entitled, as a widower, to a Social Security benefit of $206 a month after my wife Paula had died in childbirth.”

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Who was she fighting for in the Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld case?

The Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld case not only fought for the widower Stephen Wiesenfeld but also fought for all the the widowers in the same situation as him. It shows that the case is broad and impacting for many people and was very special especially during this time period. After this case was decided there were many realization on the laws and how they were very discriminatory to others. Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for a section of gender discrimination and helped many people to live a financially stable life.

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What types of cases have Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for?

As Ruth Bader Ginsburg has experienced discrimination all her life, according to ACLU, “Many of her cases involved sex discrimination against men, which she felt might rouse more sympathy among the male justices, and show that discrimination hurts everyone.” most of her cases that she had fought for were related to gender discrimination. Her well-known cases are all relating to the justice of equity and not only for women but also for men as well, just like the Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld case.

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Ford funding for the WRP.
Some of the program officers at Ford knew about RBG and her skills in the litigation field, so they

wanted to get help from the WRP. The officers helped convince Ford to propose a grant to WRP.  Aryeh Neier was eager to accept their grant because it would provide support for WRP, but Ford stated that there was a condition, that the WRP could not support abortion rights. This was a major problem for the ACLU because they had already decided to involve themselves in trying to make abortion rights possible. But, the WRP needed funding from Ford to solve bigger issues. Aryeh Neier decided to create a separate program called the Reproductive Freedom Project. This project was to work with the WRP, but instead of being funded by Ford, they were funded by John D. Rockefeller III who let them support abortion rights. The WRP and the RFP both became the strongest projects for fighting for gender and reproductive equity.

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The WRP's Christman v. American Cyanamid Case.
In the 70s, as women began filling majorly all-male jobs, many companies and employers of these women thought that the positions and jobs they were placed in could cause health risks and could be dangerous to reproduction. The solution was to ban and exclude all reproducing women from these positions. This solution was never implemented in occupations that presented similar hazards, but those occupations were mainly for female positions and had a much lower pay. The WRP wanted to fight this ban, and they did this in the ‘Christman v. American Cyanamid’ case. This case revolved around five women who became sterilized in order to keep their jobs, but shortly after, their jobs were eliminated. Rather than cleaning up the workplace for women to be safer and be able to work there without harming their reproduction, the companies chose to exclude the women at the company.

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The WRP's UAW v. Johnson Controls case.

Another case where the WRP fought a case where women were being discriminated against in employment in America is the ‘UAW v. Johnson Controls’ case. In this case, the WRP made sure that women were given the opportunity to equal employment. This case paved the way for equality by providing a workplace that is protective of both sexes. This decision was a necessary step for all women in America because, without this decision, women would still be given fewer opportunities in an occupation based on their reproduction.

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"Do You Have Any Regrets?" Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Answers in 2019 | NPR

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https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KRM5xpgjscgTz3413k7GwVnpgTEVscipCcNkPRDduc4/edit