Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought for equality "brick by brick, case by case"
Members of Congress and guests pay their respects to the late Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Photo: Olivier Douliery/Pool/AFP via Getty Images
A bipartisan group of female lawmakers flanked the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's casket as she was carried down the Capitol steps today after lying in state in Sanctuary Hall.
What they're saying: Rabbi Lauren Holtzblatt eulogized Ginsburg as a lawyer who "won equality for women and men — not in one swift victory but brick by brick, case by case, through meticulous careful lawyering."
Why it matters: Women are underrepresented in positions of power in U.S. politics.
- Ginsburg was the first woman and first Jewish American to lie in state at the Capitol.
- That list includes 31 known others — plus unknown soldiers from WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam.
- Rosa Parks lay in honor — a distinction for private citizens — after her death in 2005. Billy Graham received similar treatment after he died in 2018.
Joe Biden, who chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee during Ginsburg's Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1993, was in attendance, as was Sen. Kamala Harris.
Highlights from the service, per the N.Y. Times.
- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: “It is with profound sorrow and deep sympathy to the Ginsburg family that I have the high honor to welcome Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to lie in state in the Capitol of the United States. ... She does so on a catafalque built for Abraham Lincoln."
- Ginsburg's longtime trainer Bryant Johnson did 3 pushups in her honor.
- American opera singer Denyce Graves performed the spiritual “Deep River” and Gene Scheer’s “American Anthem," the N.Y. Times notes.