Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Liberal Stalwart, Dies At 87

WASHINGTON, DC — U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who used her position to fight gender discrimination and unify the court's liberal wing, died of complications of metastatic pancreas cancer Friday at her home in Washington, D.C. She was 87.

"Our nation has lost a justice of historic stature," Chief Justice John Roberts said in a statement announcing her death. "We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague. Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tireless and resolute champion of justice."

The diminutive-yet-formidable justice, known for snazzing up her staid black robe with lavish collars and necklaces signaling how she would vote on key issues before the court, showed her grit through four bouts with cancer.

Notably, she was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery in 2018 when she cast the deciding vote that doomed President Donald Trump’s proposed immigrant asylum restrictions.

RELATED: 5 Things To Know About Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Life

Even the briefest mentions of her health had caused panic among America’s liberals and progressives, who saw her as the bulwark between the repeal of abortion rights and protections for women, a sharply conservative court, and even the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution.

Her death is already ramping up campaigning over the makeup of the court in advance of November's election.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement hours after Ginsburg's death that he will allow the chamber to vote on a nominee put forth by Trump — though in 2016 after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, he refused to allow the Senate to consider former President Barack Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland.

In a statement, Obama called for "consistency" from Senate Republicans.

"A basic principle of the law — and of everyday fairness — is that we apply rules with consistency, and not based on what’s convenient or advantageous in the moment," Obama said.

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Joe Biden also said the confirmation should wait until after the election.

RELATED: McConnell To Allow Vote On Trump Nominee To Replace Ginsburg

“Tonight, and in the coming days, we should be focused on the loss of Justice Ginsburg and her enduring legacy," Biden said a statement. "But just so there is no doubt, let me be clear: The voters should pick a President, and that President should select a successor.”

Biden, who presided over Ginsburg's confirmation hearing as a senator, said Ginsburg stood and fought "for all of us." He went on to call her a "beloved figure" who was "fierce and unflinching" in her pursuit of civil and legal rights.

"As a young attorney, she persisted through every challenge that an unequal system placed in her way to change the laws of our land and lead the legal charge to advance equal rights for women," Biden said in a statement.

RELATED: 'I Loved Her To Pieces': Justices React To RGB Death

Trump reacted to Ginsburg's death after leaving the stage at a campaign rally in Minneosta.

"She led an amazing life," Trump said. "What else can you say? She was an amazing woman, whether you agree or not. She was an amazing woman who led an amazing life. I’m actually sad to hear that.”

As her strength waned, Ginsburg dictated a statement to her granddaughter Clara Spera that said, "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

Scores of people gathered outside the Supreme Court building as word of Ginsburg's death spread. Many chanted "RBG." Others waved rainbow flags, a nod to Ginsburg's vote with the majority in the landmark 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage. The U.S. flags over the Capitol were lowered to half staff "to honor the patriotism of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg," House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statement.

"Every woman and girl, and therefore every family, in America has benefitted from her brilliance," Pelosi said.

The flag was lowered over the White House, too, in honor of "a trailblazer for women," White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany said on Twitter.

Tributes poured in on social media and politicians from both major political parties issued statements.

Obama called Ginsburg a "warrior for gender equality."

"Justice Ginsburg inspired the generations who followed her, from the tiniest trick-or-treaters to law students burning the midnight oil to the most powerful leaders in the land," he said. "Michelle and I admired her greatly, we’re profoundly thankful for the legacy she left this country."

Former President Bill Clinton, who appointed Ginsburg to the court in 1993, said "America has lost one of the most extraordinary Justices ever to serve on the Supreme Court." Former first lady Hillary Clinton, who served as U.S. senator and secretary of state before her unsuccessful 2016 presidential bid, said the fiery justice "paved the way for so many women, including me."

"There will never be another like her," she wrote on Twitter. "Thank you RBG."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state's "heart breaks with the passing of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg."

"During her extraordinary career, this Brooklyn native broke barriers & the letters RBG took on new meaning—as battle cry & inspiration," he wrote on Twitter. "Her legal mind & dedication to justice leave an indelible mark on America."

Former President George W. Bush said that during 87 years in pursuit of justice and equality, Ginsburg "inspired more than one generation of women and girls."

"Justice Ginsburg loved our country and loved the law," he said in a statement. "Laura and I are fortunate to have known this smart and humorous trailblazer, and we send our condolences to the Ginsburg family."

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent who moved the Democratic party to the left in two unsuccessful presidential bids, called Ginsburg's death "a tremendous loss to our country."

"She was an extraordinary champion of justice and equal rights, and will be remembered as one of the great justices in modern American history," he wrote on Twitter.

"Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a titan of justice," former Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg wrote on Twitter. "Her jurisprudence expanded the rights of all Americans, shaping our lives for the better. And her example now shines within the history of our country, there to inspire generations."

Ginsburg often made light of what had become an almost ritualistic “deathwatch” among both her fans and critics.

“There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I,” she added with a smile in the NPR interview, "am very much alive.”

For her part, Ginsburg worried little that a more-conservative court would reduce gender protections she and others fought for so tirelessly. “The world has changed,” she said in a 2019 interview with National Public Radio. “I don’t think there’s any going back to the old ways.”

Lifelong Fight For Gender Equality

Capping a lifelong fight against gender discrimination, the “notorious RBG,” as she was called, was only the second woman justice in U.S. history and the court’s longest-serving female until her death. She brought to the bench the clear and unwavering voice of a woman who had lived the history the court was righting with landmark rulings that broke new ground for gender equality in the United States.

As a first-year student at the male-dominated Harvard Law School in 1956 — she was one of only nine women in her 500-member class, and the first ever to serve on the Harvard Law Review — she was asked by a professor to justify taking the place in a rigorous acceptance process that might have gone to a man. Later, despite having graduated at the top of her Columbia Law School class in 1959, Ginsburg was repeatedly passed over.

“Suppose I had gotten a job as a permanent associate,” Ginsburg said in 2017, remarking on her experience as a woman trying to break into a male-dominated profession. “Probably, I would’ve climbed up the ladder and today I would be a retired partner. So often in life, things that you regard as an impediment turn out to be great, good fortune.”

After her confirmation in 1993, Ginsburg chipped away at discriminatory laws one case at a time, much as she had in the 1970s as the co-founder and director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s influential Women’s Rights Project. She nudged women ahead not through sweeping changes but in specific cases of gender discrimination that sent powerful messages to state legislatures on what’s allowed under the Constitution and what isn’t.

Powerful examples were her 1996 majority opinion opening the all-male Virginia Military Institute to women, and stinging dissents in a Title VII employment discrimination case, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., in 2007, and in the 2014 Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case that extended to religious protections to corporations.

In Ledbetter v. Goodyear, Ginsburg wrote in her dissent that the majority’s ruling was both out of tune with the realities of wage discrimination, “a cramped interpretation of Title VII, incompatible with the statute’s broad remedial purpose,” and a “parsimonious reading of Title VII” that state legislatures “may act to correct.”

Later, she worked closely with President Barack Obama to write the majority opinion out of the law books with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, the first piece of legislation Obama signed.

In a passionate, 35-page dissent on the case involving Hobby Lobby’s refusal to provide employees’ health care insurance with birth control coverage under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, Ginsburg called the 5-4 majority ruling “a decision of startling breadth.”

Until that decision, she wrote, religious exemptions had never been extended to any entity operating in “the commercial, profit-making world.”

“The reason why is hardly obscure,” she wrote. “Religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith. Not so of for-profit corporations. Workers who sustain the operations of those corporations commonly are not drawn from one religious community. Indeed, by law, no religion-based criterion can restrict the work force of for-profit corporations … The distinction between a community made up of believers in the same religion and one embracing persons of diverse beliefs, clear as it is, constantly escapes the Court’s attention. One can only wonder why the Court shuts this key difference from sight.”

Addressing the freedom-to-exercise-religion claims at the heart of the case, Ginsburg wrote that “in sum, [y]our right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

‘First Boy Who Cared That I Had A Brain’

Joan Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn, New York, on March 15, 1933, and grew up in the Flatbush neighborhood. Her father was a Jewish immigrant from Odessa, Ukraine, who worked as a furrier at the height of the Depression, and her mother, born in New York to Austrian Jewish parents, worked in a garment factory.

She credited her mother with instilling in her a lifelong love for education. She graduated at the top of her class at Cornell University in 1954, the same year she married Martin “Marty” Ginsburg, “the first boy I knew who cared that I had a brain,” Ginsburg said in a 2014 interview with Katie Couric.

She took a break from her own education when the Ginsburgs’ first child was born in 1955 and while her husband served in the military. When he returned, she enrolled in Harvard Law and famously kept her position at the top of her class while balancing the challenges of motherhood and monitoring her husband’s classes after he was diagnosed with testicular cancer in 1956.

She didn’t get a job until one of her Columbia professors explicitly refused to recommend any other graduates for clerkships until U.S. District Judge Edmund L. Palmieri hired her. She clerked for Palmieri for two years, and then got a smattering of law firm offers, but turned them down because the salaries were much lower than for the men were paid to do the same job.

A Staunch Defender Of Women

Instead, Ginsburg pursued her passions, most notably through the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project. She successfully argued six landmark cases before the Supreme Court during that time, bringing about incremental change not only for women who were discriminated against but also men.

A keen constitutional scholar, Ginsburg wove prior civil rights rulings on race into her arguments and shrewdly used male plaintiffs in some cases to persuade the Supreme Court to end gender discrimination. She often relied on the 14th Amendment, including in Reed v. Reed in 1971, when the court used the amendment’s Equal Protection Clause for the first time to strike down an Idaho law that automatically favored the father over the mother as the administrator of a minor child’s estate.

What she accomplished to improve gender equality during those years eclipsed anything she’s done since, Ginsburg told National Public Radio in early 2019.

President Jimmy Carter appointed Ginsburg to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 1980, and she served for 13 years until her appointment to the Supreme Court.

"I do think I was born under a very bright star," she told NPR in 2019. "I get out of law schools with top grades; no law firm in the city of New York will hire me; I end up with a teaching job and time to devote to evening out the rights of women and men."

Ginsburg was preceded in death by her husband, Marty, in 2010. Just as she watched over him and monitored his classes when they were in law school at Harvard, he took care of her during her bouts with cancer and slept by her side on a couch or cot when she was hospitalized. At one point, he noticed a problem with her IV, and Ginsburg told NPR she “might not have lived if he hadn’t been there.”

He served not only as her chef, putting his famed culinary skills to work on meals, but also curated a morning reading list of newspaper clippings. “I miss him every morning,” Ginsburg said in the early 2019 interview.

Ginsburg is survived by her two children, Jane C. Ginsburg, a professor at Columbia Law School, and James Steven Ginsburg, the founder and president of the Chicago-based Cedille Records, a classical recording company. Four grandchildren also survive.