Listener supported WNYC Studios. Hey, it's Chad, this is Radiolab. Tonight, we lost a legend. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died. She was 87. It's a lot to think about. A few years ago, Radiolab created a spinoff series, More Perfect about Supreme Court, and in one episode we told a story about our RBG that has.

It stuck with me, I think it's a story we should all listen to right now. Because it's a. It's a sort of a snapshot of how one person can make change in the world in memory of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. We wanted to rerelease it for you again tonight. It comes to you from producer Julia Longoria. I'm going to ask you to utterly false question, which is where would you like to start as if we have been doing this for so damn long?

OK, so let me outline the basic dilemma that's at the heart of the story here. And I'm going to put it to you as a question. Bring it.

If you were to do a control F in the Constitution, like, how many times do you think the word sex comes up? Oh. That's interesting. Second, no guessing what the answer is one one time in the 19th Amendment, which grants people the right to vote based on sex.

Really? Yes, that's the only time. That's the only time.

Which is crazy because we are like a nun. Is there a sex word that's not sex, like gender or something? So, no, nothing is there. Like ladies in the guns.

Women know the really constitutionally women have a problem, which is that basically we're not in the Constitution except like in this one little spot.

So when it comes to discriminating against women, some people have argued that you there's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do it.

Certainly, the Constitution does not require sexual discrimination and discrimination on the basis of sex. Constitution doesn't require it. It simply doesn't forbid it. That's the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

It doesn't mean nobody ever voted for that. So where do you get it from?

There was nothing that said that. I mean, not those words explicitly, but there is nothing that says you can't discriminate, not on the basis of sex.

That's legal editor Christian Farias. We had a 14th Amendment that told people that we are equal under the law, that everyone has equal protection of the laws.

But doesn't that say it's kind of you know, they never applied the 14th Amendment to women. They didn't apply the 15th.

That's Martha Griffith's congresswoman.

When you think about the history of the 14th Amendment, as legal editor Linda Hirshman says the 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, along with the 13th and 14th, 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and 15th Amendment, essentially giving black people really black men the right to vote.

If you understand the 14th Amendment to be a part of that trio of amendments, you're like, oh, OK.

It was meant to bring equality to black people when the 15th Amendment had been written, which that every citizen could vote in the name of heavens. Why couldn't women vote? Why didn't you why did you have to have the 19th Amendment? Of course, the answer was they didn't consider women people.

But there was this basic assumption in the law that, you know, equality for black people is one thing, but men and women, they're different.

It was the case that the Supreme Court had never once met a distinction between men and women it didn't like.

Wendy Williams, law professor emeritus at Georgetown. What are some of my greatest hits of the ridiculous distinction?

OK, here, here there was a case called Bradwell and it was 1873 or four. In that case, a woman wanted to become a lawyer. Illinois bar said no. And the justices said that that that was a perfectly good rule because the justice system could be seen as not appropriate for women.

Now, let's jump clear into the next century here, 1948 case.

It was called Gossard versus Cleary that went to the Supreme Court. And the issue was whether women could be bartenders.

The court thought that that was pretty humorous, that it made sense that women could not be bartenders unless their husbands or fathers were in charge of the bar.

Both those laws, you know, women are not supposed to be at the bar at either bar.

Yeah, right. Those two cases represent attitudes almost 80 years apart, that women belonged in the private sphere.

That was not only their place, it was built into their bodies.

And that was the assumption for a long, long time. But just about 67. There are a lot of women in this country who feel like they're being pushed around things, things had started to come to a boil and they have become very vocal.

They call themselves the Women's Liberation Movement Section Race because they are easily visible. Differences have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups.

So in the late 60s and early 70s, people like Gloria Steinem, we are talking about a society in which there will be no rules other than those chosen free from the diseases of racism, ordering lord of sexism, classism.

They get some traction saying, OK, it's time to put us in the Constitution. Hurry up. Some historians say it's a constitutional convention for women. I move the adoption of the following resolution.

And what you see is this push for something called the Equal Rights Amendment. The Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified. What are your hopes for what you think it will be ratified to ratify it early next year? I'm quite sure that in nineteen seventy five it will be ratified, but it didn't get the votes in 1975.

I hope 1976 will be the year or in 1976. A special report on the 1977 National Women's Conference or in 1977.

And the movement is stalled. Why? What what stalled it? Well, a lot.

But much of the credit goes to this woman, Phyllis Schlafly of Alden, Illinois, a woman named Phyllis Schlafly.

I would like to thank my husband, Fred, for letting me come today. I love to say that because it irritates the women's lovers more than anything that I said.

She was a lawyer and a self-described housewife who started a movement called Stop Yaara.

The whole thing is misrepresented as a women's rights amendment. In fact, the principal beneficiary will be men. It will give men a great opportunity to get out from under their obligations.

Her position was that the Equal Rights Amendment would actually strip women of the special privilege that they have that comes from being a woman.

Not I think, though, the laws of our country have given a very wonderful status to the married woman, and the wife has a great deal of many rights. For example, she has the legal right to be supported by her husband.

And she said if this amendment passes, there will be certain unintended consequences to be married to.

The Equal Rights Amendment says you cannot discriminate on account of sex. And if you want to deny a marriage license to a man and a man or deny homosexual the right to teach in the schools or to adopt children, it is on account of sex that you would deny it and that would be unconstitutional under ERISA.

And that argument caught on.

I would caution the members of this platform committee that there are things that could happen from the passage of an amendment that none of us would like to see happen.

I think that families would generation after generation deteriorate. I think that there would be homosexuals to expect preferential treatment. He said, brother. We're all in danger. You got to hear what I have to say, because you know what's going to happen if they pass the E.R., there will be women and all of our bathrooms, women using all our stalls. They'll be waste in the paper towels. They'll be hogging the urinals. They'll be pushing the old supporters, pushing hard hair dryers to pass urine.

Lord, I don't know what we're going to do.

They had the Equal Rights Amendment passed, legal editor Linda Hirshman again, it would have looked a lot like the racial civil rights movement did, but the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. It fell three states short to get a constitutional amendment passed. Turns out you need three quarters of state legislatures to say they want it. That is 38 out of 50. They only ever got thirty five, dude.

So the question is, if you want to get equal rights for women written into the law, what do you do? There's no Eora. The women's lib movement sparked a backlash.

Like what do you do? Enter stage left, not, not. So this is the notorious RPG.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, RPG can do 20 push ups and not the so-called girl kind that before she was a Supreme Court justice and then just icon or a workout sensation shows all the moves before all that.

Ruth Ginsburg, she was at the ACLU. This was in the 70s.

And one of the characteristics of Ruth Ginsburg which exist to this day. Well, you can hear this. It's the first time she argued in front of the Supreme Court in 1973 when you'd ask her question, there would be silence, enough silence, Mrs. Ginsburg. To make a person nervous and start trying to help her answer the question, you had to wait. But we can imagine that it was in one of those long pauses that Ruth Bader Ginsburg rescued some of the key principles behind the IRA, repackaged and marched him in through a side door.

Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court sex like race is a visible characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability. Sex like race has been made the basis for unjustified or. Ways to back it up a second, what what exactly did RBG do? So let me walk you through it now, OK?

It's it's beautiful. The era fight is underway and RBG and her colleagues are watching this happen and they're getting worried.

What if the era doesn't pass? So what are we going to do if that's the case? How are we going to get equal rights for women?

So they decided, OK, as an alternate approach, let's go back to the 14th Amendment.

The 14th Amendment immediate objective was to provide national protection for the newly freed slaves, which, as we said, was designed from the beginning to be only about race.

But it's sweeping provisions suggest broader objectives. The states were prevented from depriving any person equal protection of the law.

Well, it says the word person. So that should include women.

Yeah. If they could just get the courts to see it that way, then by default almost we would have a sort of Eryr.

And accordingly, the task was showing that the racially inflected Fourteenth Amendment applied to sex.

So what about the law? Is she trying to change what what does she want the court to say?

She wants the court to say that sex would be treated just like race. And here's why that's so important. When the court sees racial discrimination happening under the 14th Amendment, it takes a really hard line.

It looks at it really, really closely, or at least it's supposed to, whereas other kinds of discrimination, not so much, because actually some discrimination is necessary.

The law discriminates. It has to discriminate between 18 year olds and 17 year olds, between criminals and non criminals.

There would be chaos otherwise. Right. But the courts decided that race is going to be a big red flag. They're going to ask governments, legislatures, presidents to have a compelling reason and compelling state interest to do race discrimination. Otherwise, it's going to be unconstitutional. You with me so far. Yes.

To discriminate based on race, you need to pass a really super hard test. By the way, the legal name for this test of strict scrutiny, and they should have called it like we mean business or something like that.

But anyway, the point was that they took it seriously, which, you know, back in the day they weren't doing with sex discrimination at all, because when legislatures would come up with these laws like this, women can't be bartenders law.

The Supreme Court would be like, you know, you guys probably have a good reason for that.

It doesn't review reason. Can just be a reason, doesn't have to be very good, have to be good. They could even maybe even make it up on the fly. It just has to be a reason for upholding this law.

Like in the case of the bartenders law, bars are dangerous.

Women need more protection. And of course, it would be like, OK, sure.

So RBG needed a way to convince the court to be as intense about sex discrimination as they were about race discrimination.

But how do you convince an audience of men?

Who are used to discriminating on the basis of sex, who've been doing it for years. How do you convince them that discrimination is a bad thing? I think of people who want to keep women down would like nothing better than to women, go off in the corner and speak only to women. Nothing would happen.

This is her giving a recent talk about her 1970s strategy.

You need to persuade men that this is right for society.

Part one of her strategy. Choose your words carefully.

I had a secretary at Columbia who said I'm typing these things for you and jumping out all over the page.

Except don't you know that the audience you are addressing, the first association of those men with the word sex is not what you're talking about.

So why don't you use your grandma book term, use gender?

Because you know, the word sex has a charge to it. Gender is cooler. And part two of her strategy, choose your cases carefully. This is all happening in the 70s when RBG is the head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project. So she's deciding which kinds of cases the ACLU is going to support as they make their way to an all male Supreme Court. And her strategy was, if we live in a man's world right now, we need to find cases that nine men at this moment can handle.

So, for example, early on in her tenure at the Women's Rights Project, the other lefty lawyers are suggesting that the women's movement needs to take up the cause of lesbian rights. And she says not yet.

And I think Go-slow is the right approach. She said, first, we need to go after that small and insidious idea at the Supreme Court had been keeping alive for years.

The laws of our country have given a very wonderful status to the married woman, that Phyllis Schlafly idea that discrimination is actually good for women.

Gender classifications were always rationalized as favors to women, and so RPG decided not just to bring cases where women were the victims of discrimination.

OK, my name is Curtis Craig. She brought cases where men were the victims. Who were you as an 18 year old?

And that's a great question. I was like any 18 year old young man, invincible, you know, I thought I was quite the ladies man, you name it.

I mean, he made it into Lambda Chi Alpha at Oklahoma State and he was living at the frat house.

Our fraternity was primarily made up of wrestlers. So it was when you went down the hall, you're about to be taken down at any moment. You'd be thrown into the wall and you'd you'd leave a body print.

What do you mean, like an indentation literally in the wall or like.

Yeah, yeah. It was it was amazing. There was a lot of partying going on. There are a lot of beer, the yard would be filled with beer cans.

And here's the key. If they wanted to get all that beer and whizbang my glasses, they had to enlist the help of the ladies. Yeah, I mean, you know, the sorority sisters. Yes. You would have a female buy you a beer and you'd go out and party. They need the women to buy beer. Yep. Why? Because in Oklahoma State at the time, Oklahoma had a very silly law.

Girls could buy beer at age 18, but the boys had to wait until 21.

And there was something about the level of maturity, I guess, for women versus men at that time.

The basic principle was that boys got into more car accidents so they should be trusted with less beer. And did that make you angry?

Oh, absolutely. Well, it was extremely unfair. Yeah, I would say it made, I think, most men angry at the time and the Supreme Court case was born.

So the thirsty boys at a fraternity brought this case.

So the RBG IBG gets involved in this beer case. Yes, but this is this is a this is a situation where women have rights, men don't have.

Why would she want to argue this case? And she'd want the opposite.

Well, this is where her strategy is kind of like a Trojan horse.

If you look at this case right on the outside, it looks like a case about men being discriminated against. Yeah, but if you think about it beneath that discrimination is actually this kind of unspoken idea about women. So go with me on this. Right. If men are irresponsible, they can't handle beer, then women. Girls are more responsible and well-behaved, more delicate. They could be trusted with something like beer because they won't abuse it, you know?

So with that line of thinking, it's not long before you're trying to protect women, protect them from, you know, scary places like bars or courtrooms or political office.

Using this case, RBG is able to walk into the court. This discrimination about men, but also the discrimination against women that's attached to it in or inside of it.

Oh, that's clever. We're just getting started.

But I was going on with massive amounts of money. All of us will continue with this story in just a minute.

But all the stuff that stuff like this is Melissa Gutierrez in Evergreen, Colorado.

Radiolab is supported in part by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, enhancing public understanding of science technology in the modern world. More information about Sloan at W w w dot Sloan. Doug.

This is Radiolab, I'm Jad Abumrad, and we are marking the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. With a story from producer Julia Longoria about a case involving boys in beer and a legal move which reminds you of the wily Odysseus because of the case that Julie is about to describe.

Became something of a Trojan horse. In the battle for women's rights. Now, the story of the Trojan horse, maybe you know this it's, you know, ancient Greece, you've got Sparta fighting Troy.

The Spartans want to get into the city of Troy, but it's this giant walled city, too big, they can't get in. And so Odysseus comes up with this clever plan will give the Trojans this giant wooden horse. They'll bring it into their city. They'll think it's a gift that we're retreating, which is what they thought. And then at night, our soldiers who are hidden inside the horse will come out.

And they will take the city now, in our case, Odysseus is is Aaberg, the city she's trying to get into is the all male Supreme Court.

But in order for this very admittedly imperfect analogy to work, we need someone in the horse to come out, the warrior in the horse, the woman warrior, and in our case, that woman warrior.

She didn't even know she was going to go into battle. Julia, you take from here.

So I got in the car and I drove a long time, tiny little gravel road leading up to a narrow strip of houses to Sparta, North Carolina. It's called Spada.

I know cows and horses and Trump signs tractor up front trespassing signs.

And so I walk up to this house. It's this beautiful cream colored cottage perched on top of a mountain.

Wow. And I can hear Whitney Houston saving all my love for you, blasting trouble.

I know I didn't. You, Carolyn. Hi. Very nice to meet you. And I meet Carolyn Whitener.

I'm 76. Soon be 77.

She immediately offers me a course of coverage.

Yeah, well, you have a beer with me.

No, I can't. I'm a diabetic. I can drink a little bit. Not much. Thank you. And I've got some brownies over here. What does she look like?

Describe her reddish blond hair, green eyes. She's wearing golden hoops.

She has like this here, this air about her that she could have been a beauty queen, you know, but she also could have been a car mechanic about yourself.

Well, I am. So we get to talking. I tell her a little bit about who I am, about the story. She actually told me like a French, like, I'm proud.

I'm proud of the young women. I have a granddaughter that I'm so proud of. When you your generation, they're finishing the fight. I started.

She just and I was essentially like, no, no, no, no. This stuff like your story has like a huge impact on, like, women like me, you know, generation.

And see, my name was never tied in with it. It was always Craig's name. So, you know, it wasn't that big a deal.

She told me she grew up bouncing around different oil fields. So I was on oil field trash. That's what we were called oilfield trash.

That meant Carolyn and her brother and sisters split the school year between two or three schools a year. We moved a lot, she says. School didn't come easily to her. But my dad, he taught all three of us how to well, he was a welder, how to work on a car.

She was very independent. And when she was about thirteen, they moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma.

It happened in all Oklahoma and that. Is where she met Dwayne, that was the first boy I went with, they met in high school and they were roughly the same age, but he was three years ahead of her school.

And what attracted you to him? His mind? He had an excellent mind and he was just a farm boy with no education. He never went to college, but he could have been about anything he wanted to be.

What do you think attracted him to you? Like, what do you think he saw in you? I was somebody new in town talking to Carolyn.

I got the sense she did not have any shortage of suitors that I married him when I turned 18.

I don't think that is that hard.

And when I married my husband, I was equal to him except the money. And he didn't think anybody could handle that but him. He acted like he was raising me. And he probably was.

She says she was really comfortable with him. He was a quiet man with his brilliant mind, but he just he was pure German girl.

Have you ever met a German man? OK, they are in total control.

And how does Carolyn connect to the case with the frat boys and RBG?

OK, so here's what happens. It's 1962. Carolyn and Dwayne are about 20 years old at this point and they move to a town called Stillwater, Oklahoma to open a business and Stillwater.

Is a college town, it's that college town that got Oklahoma State University right there. Tons of fraternities, including Lambda with the rustler's huge homecoming, drawing over 40000 alumni.

We didn't know what homecoming was. I had no idea what homecoming was. But shortly after moving to Stillwater, they opened the doors to the Huncke and holer.

And where we went in was just about three blocks, four blocks from the college, and we went into business there, a drive thru convenience store, it was like a real old gas station with the opiate in the floor.

Here's how it would work.

Customers pull up to the side of the convenience store and they drive through, honk their horn, holler their order, and you'd have to go out and wait on them, come back in and get what they wanted and take it back out.

So it's a lot of. In and out. In and out. All night long, you wear tennis shoes out real fast. So it was all sheer energy and guts. Homecoming night, we were supposed to close at 11:00. The store is flooded with customers till I think two or three o'clock in the morning. They're like thrilled because they've never run a business by themselves before. And all these college kids are coming in and buying Coors beer, including, of course, a steady stream of girls buying beer, presumably for their boyfriends.

And yeah, I never did get to see homecoming. All I saw was cars coming in and out. Fast forward a few years.

It's 1972 back at the university.

He was tall, had long blond hair. Curtis Craig's buddy named Mark Walker. He was the president Lambda Chi house at the time.

Is it a political science class?

And and the professor starts talking about the whole fight for the era, which is happening right at that moment. And at this point, Oklahoma hasn't ratified the era. And somehow the conversation turns to this beer law, like talk about discrimination. This beer law is discrimination against us.

And a professor challenged him about doing something about the beer laws if he was going to complain about him.

So one day I was behind the counter, people coming in and out. Mark Walker walks into the honk and holler. The young man came in to talk to me.

She doesn't really have time to talk. She's running in and out. But they stood there waiting patiently. I bet he was in there for hours and he was looking at the beer license.

He looks at the license and he notices that Carolyn's name is the one on it, because actually my husband lost his license after he sold beer to a young man.

So he put them in my name.

Anyway, at a certain point in between all the honks and hollers, he asked me what I thought about the beer laws, and I told him I was very vocal about it.

I always had been. She says it doesn't make any sense.

We send these young men off to war and we're being drafted at 18, but we don't let them drink beer when they come back. Was that just not to mention the liability issues? You have these eighteen year old girls coming in, buying beer, slipping it to their boyfriends. How am I supposed to stop that?

You can't prove who buys what. So eventually when Mark Walker asked for her help, he said he was going to do a term paper. She's like, sure, why not? I was always willing to help them because they had helped us get started. And I still thought it was a term paper. So was he not being completely honest with you then?

Well, I didn't hear half of what he said. I was busy every time he came in. So, you know, it wasn't that important at the time. So I didn't think more about it. He left. My husband was gone. He was out of state working. And I didn't say anything to him about it. It wasn't important. You know, I just thought it was a conversation.

But it wasn't just a conversation, because before that meeting, Mark had gone out looking for a lawyer. That's correct. And Curtis and Mark and the other frat brothers had tried to raise some money that was flawed.

You know, campus town, everybody uses their last dollar for that last beer.

But they managed to find this lawyer who would do it on the cheap. All right.

Well, I'm just a regular attorney at law. No big mo, no big deal.

I remember I'm always wearing his military boots. Actually, I believe he wore them even to the Supreme Court.

Fred had worked on another male discrimination case in the past. And to him, this case was pretty straightforward.

Man couldn't buy beer until they were twenty one. But most irresponsible and drunken woman in the state could buy unlimited quantities at eighteen. Well, that was discrimination. It was kind of more a male rights case.

Well, it was and do you remember corresponding with Ruth Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Yes, I knew Ruth Bader Ginsburg before she was on the court.

Somehow Ruth Bader Ginsburg noticed this case and she watched as Fred made his way up.

The court's losing at every level.

And by this point, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was head of the women's rights project at the ACLU. She'd already argued a few cases before the Supreme Court, which had engaged the court slowly toward the idea that sex was like race. And she thought that this case was interesting. She gave Fred a call.

You know, we have a problem in a personal relationship.

There's no question I was something of an unreconstructed male chauvinist and she was not Fred did not see this as a women's rights case was just kind of an unnecessary insult to man for no reason at all.

And Ruth, looking at this case that. No, Fred, it's more than that. It didn't matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman, because in most of those cases, the discrimination against the man was derivative of a prior and worse discrimination against the woman.

Here's to the ladies, the fair and the week, how do they do it? Where do they find all that energy, that seemingly inexhaustible store of Pep and Ginger?

Again, Ruth was after the stereotype about women that was nestled inside the beer law, that women are more responsible and well-behaved.

But in order for her to make that connection, she needed Fred to write his brief in a way that would be useful to her.

So refer not just to male discrimination, but discrimination based on gender.

Well, I supported her. I just never was, shall we say, a militant feminist.

So like Ruth had her work cut out for her at this point, she was getting sort of used to dealing with these ropes from the sticks. So with other local lawyers that she'd worked with in the past, Ruth had been more forceful, insisting that she make the argument, but that had backfired.

So she like was like, OK, you argue it, right? She wrote to Fred telling him that she didn't need to be the one to present oral argument before the court.

She was fine if he'd do it, but she very gently, very persistently was able to convince him to let her help him with his legal brief.

But I think it was a couple of months later because my husband was out of state every month.

Meanwhile, back at the Hong Kong dollar, Carolyn has no idea what's going on.

No, no idea. And I got a phone call. My husband was on the phone. Well, I have a salesman in and I had people coming in and out. And he was I right. He was furious. I couldn't figure out what was going on.

She was like, case. What are you talking about? Well, he had picked up a newspaper in North Carolina in a bank, and it was on the front page of the newspaper with my name, and that as soon it looked like we sued everybody in the state of Oklahoma that was in office all the way down to the garbage man, he's like, what did you do?

How are we don't want to get mixed up in this. We don't want our name on this. We don't want to make a fuss like this could hurt business like how dare you?

You know, I didn't know what had happened. I really didn't know and eventually figured out it must have been that kid who came in here.

And now it's like at the Supreme Court, what I was back and forth on that phone with him trying to wait on customers. And I bet that took about three hours and he would not let up on me. And he kept calling back and calling back. He called a lawyer. He was mad.

And then the last phone call, he said, I am flying back in. And he said, you pick me up.

A couple nights later, she drove to the airport, picked him up and. He was still mad. That was the longest car ride. As they drove back, she says he just lectured her the whole ride, I just listened to him. What did he say? I don't know what he said word to word. I just know he was strong with what he said.

With my husband, it was best to just be silent. I was never afraid of him, but I knew how far to push it. Tom, we got from the airport to the other side, it was about an hour and 20 minutes, that's a long hour and 20 minutes in a car where you can't get out. And over the course of that hour and 20 minutes, she said something in her just kind of shifted. And at a certain point, she basically turned to him and was like, no.

Like, I know you want me to drop this case, but I'm going to fight this. He threatened me every which way, I didn't budge. And probably the reason why I didn't budge because he fought me so hard on it, you know, I believed in it that I had never stepped out like that. That's the first time I really put my foot down and didn't budge. I gave so much to him. I mean, I didn't get a salary for 25 years.

I didn't ask for. I figured we were equal. I figured I worked the same hours he did, and I figured I stood beside him, not behind him and not in front of him.

October 5th, 1976, the day of oral arguments, the lawyer, Fred Gilbert Arenas, across very many people that I didn't care for him, I didn't care for Fred.

He he was so pushy, insists that Carolyn needs to come to D.C. I didn't have the money to go and I didn't want to go and never traveled anywhere by myself.

What I recall that day Curtis Craig came to I was dressed up suit and tie, had borrowed a dress, plastic look like leather walking up those stairs, high heels.

I remember that distinctly. It was so big, beautiful building. I felt like I was walking forever up those stairs. I was burning up. I was sweating.

You don't hear arguments next to seventy five, six, twenty eight. Craig asked for your girlfriend. You say whenever you're ready, Brad Gilbert starts things off.

He walks up to the podium in his combat boots.

The law is broad and all encompassing and it's sweet. It says it all. Females, even those that are the most drunk, most alcoholic, most immature and most irresponsible may purchase three point two percent beer at age 18 and absolutely unlimited. But the law doesn't say it in quite those words, does it?

And by all accounts, who didn't exactly kill it? No, Your Honor. And the law doesn't say it. Quite the words that of males. The justices just kept hammering, Your Honor.

Devendorf still way he can get leverage to move his aides back and drag hammering. In a technical sense, I don't technical right once you're on it. But that is technically a complaint as drafted. And what is before the courts? Well, but you say you say what's before the court. What's before the court is your complaint?

Curtis will sit beside me and I kept punching in. What does that mean? What are they talking about? What does that mean? He kept saying you should just be quiet to over.

I'll tell you what, you don't really get any objections right then nor who is trying to sell me. I didn't understand what they were doing here.

Law that we challenged today was originally enacted in 1890.

But she says what caught her ear was a moment when Justice Rehnquist, when he call me when you say we you're referring to your client, who is the tavern keeper, a saloonkeeper. Yes, Your Honor.

And the day you win, when you call me that and the Supreme Court, I came so near standing up and correcting and I always wondered to this day, why didn't they technically turn as arguments went on, Fred did at least try to do the thing that Ruth wanted him to do.

I would say anything could be you could pass a law saying no Negro will drive while intoxicated compar sex discrimination to race discrimination.

Now, this relates to the public thing, but the thing is, you can't discriminate even for something like public safety on the basis of certain criteria. Well, if the court ever held that discrimination of this sort is of the same class as discrimination on the basis of race, Your Honor, this court has come very, very well. I asked you a question. Has it ever held? No, it has never held that it is totally to be treated the same as race.

Try to make a long story short, by the end of oral argument, things were looking great for Fred.

I mean, I think that depends on the thrust. Don't let me do. All right. Let me explain this.

First of all, at one point even interrupts a Supreme Court justice, which you don't do that supporting the denial of beer to young men. Eighteen to twenty. It just.

Yeah. Wasn't happening.

I don't have time for a parting thought. I thank you for your time. Thank you, gentlemen. The case is submitted. Well, you win some.

You lose some. Right, ladies? Well, no, no, no. Here comes the craziest part of the story. OK, it's like a double Trojan horse horse with in a horse because after the Fred Gilbert debacle, there was another case at the Supreme Court that afternoon.

Here are the facts.

And it just so happened, 75 699 that it was a case being argued by none other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Somehow she organized. I've now forgotten how to get that argued the same day that was on purpose. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God. That's genius. Yeah. No, she's a genius, Mr. Chief Justice.

And basically the court what you're saying, she somehow managed to get herself in the court on another case on the same day. So I couldn't confirm that for sure. I don't even know how you would do that. But what I can tell you is that she arranged to go second because she knew there was probably a good chance that Fred, the completely incompetent lawyer, was going to be, you know, less than amazing. The court was asking him questions and he was completely incapable of answering.

So finally the court just went, oh, never mind. And then when Ruth stood up to argue her case, they asked her about Gregory before this morning, just Mr..

Involving a law that would not permit males to make certain purchases of females could make and was attacked as a discrimination against male. Yes, my question is whether we should examine that law under the same or a different standard than if it were a discrimination against you. My answer to that question is no, in part because such a law has an insidious impact against females.

And then she told Justice Stevens, even in this case, where it seems like men are the ones who are being discriminated against, beneath that discrimination is a more insidious one against females.

It starves them docile, compliant, safe. To be truthful, answer always depends on their finding some discrimination against females. Is it your view that there is no discrimination against males? I think there is discrimination against male. If there is such discrimination, is it to be tested by the same or by a different standard from discrimination against women? My response to that, Mr Justice Stevens, is that almost every discrimination that operates against males operates against females as well.

Is that a yes or no answer? I just don't understand you. Are you trying to avoid the question? And no, I am not trying to avoid the question. I'm trying to clarify the position that I don't know of any line that doesn't that doesn't work as a two edged sword.

They go back and forth a bit. Justice Stevens is basically like, why do you keep insisting on this? Like, why do you keep saying that discrimination against men contains within it discrimination against women? They're different. And she's like, no, they're not different.

So your case depends, then, on our analyzing this case. Is it discrimination against female? My case depends on your recognition that using gender as a classification. Resorting to that classification is highly questionable and should be closely reviewed.

She makes this point again and again. All discrimination based on gender is bad and it should be checked with something at least approaching that hard core standard that the court uses for race.

That was really something seeing this little woman get up don't know of any purely female discrimination.

I'll never forget that because she was small. In the end, the women are the ones who end up hurting. Yes, she's so small in person, but she had a lot of force going to her cases submitted.

About two months later, the judgment of December 20th, 1976, Craig, against Lady Justice William Brennan announces that the court we reverse is striking down the beer law.

We hold that Oklahoma's gender based differential does constitute an invidious violation of the equal protection clause.

This silly beer case was basically the first time the court clearly said that when you discriminate based on gender, you need to pass a harder test. It wasn't as rigorous as race. It wasn't strict scrutiny. They settled on a standard that we now call intermediate scrutiny, and it was pretty damn close. RPG would go on to strengthen the standard over time, but this was the case. That first got us a kind of equal rights amendment through a side door, we wish that the court had picked a less brothy case to make that announcement.

But of course, we were very, very pleased that after that. The day the decision was announced, I had just came in from work, I was at home by myself there in Stillwater, she's by herself in the kitchen and the phone rings and who calls called National News Call to tell me that we had one.

I didn't ask what. We had one. I didn't ask anything. I just said, OK.

She hung up, stood there for a little bit, and then Craig called and he wanted me to come down and celebrate with the guys there at his fraternity fraternity. Yeah, she told them no thanks.

And then she hangs up the phone and she gets one more phone call. And it was my husband. He was in North Carolina again. And he heard he heard something about the case, but he didn't hear at all. And he said, what's going on now? And I said, we won. And he says, is it over? I said, it's over. It's totally over with. He said, Good. And he hung up. I fix me a very good drink, vodka and coke, sit down in the middle of the floor and that's the way I celebrated a drink that drank all by myself.

And it was over with. It was over with. Carolyn says that four decades after this case, she didn't understand what it meant, she didn't understand what it meant as a legal principle or that it ushered in this new era for women in this country.

But even so, in her own life. This case was a beginning. Well, a couple of years after we won that case, I went in to China right after it opened up.

She saved up money and went with her sister in law because Duane didn't want to come with them. I did. I was so curious and we never went like the tourist went. We'd get on a train. And if we saw something we wanted to stop and see, we would stop. We never had a schedule and I never did really go to shop. I was just curious about the people and how they lived. I saw so much and I talked to so many people while I was gone that it was like a hunger.

And you grow from it. And I just want to see things, and that was just dope that just opened the doors for me. What happened to Carolyn in the end? She and Dwayne divorced in 2007. Oh, and and when and when you said she didn't know the affect her case had for decades, like when did she figure it out or when it what?

How so? In around 1996, this professor guy named Bob Darsey calls her up and invites her to speak at a class.

And she is kind of learning from the students and from the professor like what the case actually stood for. And then eventually the professor puts her in touch with Ruth Bader Ginsburg and they meet again in person and it sort of starts to dawn on her.

One of the letters.

That's the one when we're sitting in her bedroom, she was looking through some old letters and pulled out one with the Supreme Court seal on it.

Can you read it? No, I don't have my glasses. You have to read.

Okay, dear Carol. And as I told you in 1996, when we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Craig versus Born, you are the true heroine of that case.

Although no financial gain was at stake for you, you realize the potential the case had and paving the way for the court's recognition of equal citizenship, stature of men and women as constitutional principle.

I was going to get that framed. I haven't done it yet. Signed Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I need to get it laminate for I have framed.

Producer Julia Longoria. So that was the story that we broadcast a couple of years ago and more perfect that we felt called to bring back right now in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who just passed away at age 87. It's hard to imagine the world without her and without her influence. May she rest in peace. I'm Jad Abumrad. Thanks for listening.