Dude, dude, to answer your question, go to the OP and read. It articulates in crystal clear language what I realize, including the Justices who took part in the opinion.
Additionally, I noticed you avoided discussing whether or not Ginsburg’s opinion is in harmony with the text and legislative intent of the 14th Amendment. Is your avoidance to discuss the majority opinion an admission that Ginsburg did impose her personal views of what the 14th Amendment should mean as the rule of law, rather than its actual meaning as understood by those who framed and helped to ratify it?
Ginsburg did allege Virginia had violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, i.e., ”…nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
But this wording contained in the 14th Amendment simply commands that whatever a State’s laws are, a person within that State’s jurisdiction may not be denied the equal protection of those laws. Keep in mind the wording does not forbid a state to write laws which make distinctions based upon sex, but whatever laws are adopted by a State, the State may not deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of those specific laws. The law must be enforced equally upon every “person”, men and women alike.
Ginsburg would have us believe the 14th Amendment was written to forbid the States from writing laws which made distinctions based upon sex, when in fact, the wording in question merely commands that whatever laws a State may write, they shall be enforce equally upon all.
And to confirm the meaning of the 14th Amendment I turn to one of its supporters present during the 39th Congress which framed and helped to ratify the Amendment.
“Its whole effect is not to confer or regulate rights, but to require that whatever of these enumerated rights and obligations are imposed by State laws shall be for and upon all citizens alike without distinctions based on race or former condition of slavery…It permits the States to say that the wife may not testify, sue or contract. It makes no law as to this. Its whole effect is to require that whatever rights as to each of the enumerated civil (not political) matters the States may confer upon one race or color of the citizens shall be held by all races in equality…It does not prohibit you from discriminating between citizens of the same race, or of different races, as to what their rights to testify, to inherit &c. shall be. But if you do discriminate, it must not be on account of race, color or former conditions of slavery. That is all. If you permit a white man who is an infidel to testify, so you must a colored infidel. Self-evidently this is the whole effect of this first section. It secures-not to all citizens, but to all races as races who are citizens- equality of protection in those enumerated civil rights which the States may deem proper to confer upon any race.” ___ SEE: Rep. Shallabarger, Congressional Globe, 1866, page 1293
So tell me, Calvin, contrary to Justice Ginsburg’s written opinion, is it not a fact neither the 14th Amendment’s text, or its legislative intent, forbids the States or people from making distinctions based upon sex?
JWK
