Icon, champion, Supreme Court Justice: Ruth Bader Ginsburg dies at 87

Her death sent shockwaves through social media as her supporters relayed messages of grief, admiration, and calls for action.

At a time of great conflict, stress, and uncertainty in the U.S., Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died Friday, sending her supporters into a state of shock on social media.

Ginsburg, a beloved figure who was famous for her historic career as much as her workout routine that inspired Saturday Night Live sketches, died due to “complications of metastatic pancreas cancer," according to a Supreme Court statement as reported by the New York Times. She was 87.

It had become a bitter Twitter joke, something said as an aside at gatherings, back when we could still gather: Stay healthy, RBG, don't pass before Election Day. She became a liberal symbol for justice and dignity, as the country swirled into hatred and division during the Trump administration.

Days before she died, according to NPR, she told her granddaughter, "My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed."

A week before she died, President Trump announced a list of possible Supreme Court nominees.

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This wasn't her first bout with cancer. She also fought colon, lung, and liver cancer in the past.

Ginsburg's supporters almost immediately began calling for action upon hearing of her loss. "May her memory be a revolution," said Amanda Littman, executive director of Run For Something, which encourages young people to seek office. "Choose fight over fear," said SNL writer Paula Pell. "We gon fight. That's what we're gonna do," said Brittany Packnett Cunningham, co-founder of Campaign Zero, which fights to end police brutality.

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Former President Bill Clinton nominated Ginsburg to the Supreme Court in 1993. She was the second woman to become a Supreme Court Justice. After Justice Sandra Day O'Connor retired in 2006, she was the lone woman justice until Former President Barack Obama nominated Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2009.

Before being nominated, she was a prominent women's rights advocate who fought for equal rights and constitutional protections against sex discrimination. She did so several times in front of the Supreme Court prior to taking the bench and her admirers nicknamed her the "Thurgood Marshall of Women’s Rights." (Later, she also became known as the "Notorious R.B.G" due to her powerful dissents. Her face became synonymous with badass online.)

One of her cases set in a lower court, where she argued that her client, a man, should be able to receive a tax deduction for the nursing care of his elderly mother despite the law limiting such a deduction to women and widowers, got the Hollywood treatment in 2018's On the Basis of Sex. That 1970 case, a minor one in her storied career, was just one of dozens of sex discrimination cases she championed.

Two years later, she co-founded the ACLU's Women's Rights Project and Columbia University Law School granted her tenure, making her the first woman to receive the title.

In 2012, Ginsburg spoke plainly about women's equality: "So now the perception is, yes, women are here to stay. I'm sometimes asked 'When will there be enough [women on the Supreme Court]?' and I say 'When there are nine,' people are shocked. But there'd been nine men, and nobody's ever raised a question about that."

Topics Politics

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