Ginsburg: Male SCOTUS Justices Have ‘Blind Spot’ When It Comes To Women

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg talked about her Hobby Lobby dissent with Katie Couric.
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Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg believes the five male justices who ruled against the Obamacare birth control mandate in the Hobby Lobby case have a bit of a “blind spot” for women’s issues.

In an interview with Yahoo News’ Katie Couric published Thursday, Ginsburg discussed her fiery dissent in the Hobby Lobby case and argued against allowing closely held for-profit corporations to deny contraception coverage to female employees on religious grounds.

“Do you believe that the five male justices truly understood the ramifications of their decision?” Couric asked.

“I would have to say no,” Ginsburg responded. “But justices continue to think and can change. So I am ever hopeful that if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow.”

“But you do in fact feel these five justices had a bit of a blind spot?” Couric pressed.

Ginsburg agreed, drawing a parallel to the majority Supreme Court ruling against Lily Ledbetter in her seminal pay-discrimination case.

“Because they couldn’t understand what it is like to be a woman?” Couric asked.

“They all have wives, they have daughters,” Ginsburg said. “By the way, I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.”

Watch below, via Yahoo News:

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Notable Replies

  1. if the court has a blind spot today, its eyes will be open tomorrow."

    Specially if Justice Thomas’ new Long Dong Silver DVD arrives in the mail…

  2. Huh. I suppose that blind spot might not be a problem if the Justices in question were able to “truly understand the ramifications of their decision.”

    Sounds like President Constitutional Law Professor might have known what he was talking about when he called empathy “an essential ingredient for arriving at just decisions and outcomes.”

  3. Avatar for lew lew says:

    Hey their Republicans, they have blind spots for women, minorities, gays, science, corporations and the second amendment.

  4. The problem is, of course, that conservatives simply lack empathy
    (http://www.thenation.com/blog/177025/thinking-conservative-part-five-epistemology-and-empathy?page=full). If conservatives had any empathy, they wouldn’t be conservatives in the first place. Apparently, envisaging a situation from someone else’s point of view requires too many neurons for the conservative brain to be able to spare them from essential activities such as standing upright, breathing, and thinking of themselves.

  5. “They all have wives, they have daughters,” Ginsburg said. “By the way, I think daughters can change the perception of their fathers.”

    Their perception will only change due to having daughters if they do actually want their daughters’ lives to progress beyond the dictates of Victorianism.

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