- Person
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Lived
- 1933–2020
- Field
- Constitutional Law
- From
- American
The story
The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 promised people with disabilities equal treatment. Its Title II covers state and local governments and protects qualified people with disabilities from being excluded from, or denied the benefits of, public services and programmes. Yet many people with mental disabilities remained confined in institutions even when they could have lived in the community with support.
Two such women were Lois Curtis and Elaine Wilson in Georgia, who had diagnoses including schizophrenia and intellectual disability. The state's own clinicians concluded that both would be better served in community settings, but each stayed confined in a state institution for years afterwards. In 1995 the Atlanta Legal Aid Society sued on their behalf, and the case reached the Supreme Court.
On 22 June 1999 Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg delivered the Court's majority opinion in Olmstead v. L.C. The Court held that mental illness is a form of disability covered by the ADA, and that the unjustified isolation of people with disabilities is itself a form of discrimination. States must offer community placement when their treatment professionals judge it appropriate, the person does not oppose it, and it can reasonably be provided given the state's resources and the needs of others. Ginsburg explained that keeping people in institutions when they could manage in the community perpetuates unwarranted assumptions that they are incapable or unworthy of community life, and that confinement cuts people off from family, friends, work, education and culture. The Court also recognised that institutions would still be needed for some people.
The case was one of several majority opinions in which Ginsburg carried her lifelong concern with equality beyond sex discrimination. The following year, in Friends of the Earth v. Laidlaw, she wrote for the Court that residents affected by an industrial polluter could sue to seek fines.
The decision had lasting effects. About ten years later Georgia and the US Department of Justice reached a settlement to move people with developmental disabilities out of state hospitals and to serve thousands of people with mental illness in community settings. In 2011 Lois Curtis visited the White House and presented President Barack Obama with a self-portrait she had painted. Projects such as I Am Olmstead continue to share the stories of people whose lives the decision changed.
Why it matters
Olmstead established that unjustified isolation in institutions is discrimination under the ADA, giving people with disabilities a legal right to live and receive support in their communities.
About Ruth Bader Ginsburg
U.S. Supreme Court Justice; pioneer of gender equality jurisprudence; co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights Project.
More about Ruth Bader Ginsburg
- Ginsburg co-founded the ACLU Women's Rights ProjectIn 1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Project at the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined more than 300 sex discrimination cases by 1974.
- Ginsburg co-founded the first US women's rights law journalIn 1970 Ruth Bader Ginsburg co-founded the Women's Rights Law Reporter at Rutgers, the first law journal in the United States to focus exclusively on women's rights.
- Ginsburg was Columbia Law School's first tenured womanIn 1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg became the first woman granted tenure at Columbia Law School, where she co-wrote the first law school casebook on sex discrimination.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg won five of six cases for equalityLong before joining the Supreme Court, Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued six sex discrimination cases before it in the 1970s and won five.
- Ginsburg's Ledbetter dissent inspired the Fair Pay ActRuth Bader Ginsburg's 2007 dissent in Ledbetter v. Goodyear called on Congress to act. The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act became law in 2009, and she was credited with inspiring it.
- Ginsburg's Reed v. Reed brief won equal protection for womenRuth Bader Ginsburg wrote the brief in Reed v. Reed (1971), the first case in which the Supreme Court extended the Constitution's equal protection guarantee to women.
- Ginsburg won equal pay for women teachers at RutgersAt Rutgers Law School, Ruth Bader Ginsburg discovered she was paid less than male colleagues. She joined an equal pay campaign that won substantial raises for the women.
- Ginsburg's VMI opinion opened a military college to womenIn United States v. Virginia (1996), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote the opinion striking down the Virginia Military Institute's male-only admissions policy.
Sources
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg Wikipedia
- Olmstead v. L.C. Wikipedia
Another act of tikkun olam. This is part of tikkun olam, the Jewish idea of repairing the world, and every one of us can add to it.