She won. And more importantly, she established a legal framework: any law that draws a distinction based on sex must be subjected to “intermediate scrutiny”—a standard that, while not as strict as race, still required an “exceedingly persuasive justification.”
For the first time in U.S. history, women had a federal cause of action against workplace discrimination. But a law without enforcement is merely a suggestion. It would take a brilliant lawyer—and a strategic litigation campaign—to turn those words into binding precedent. That lawyer was Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The film On the Basis of Sex opens in 1970, but the real legal groundwork began earlier. In 1972, Ginsburg—then a professor at Columbia Law School—took on Moritz v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue . Charles Moritz, a bachelor, had been denied a tax deduction for the cost of his mother’s caregiver. The law allowed the deduction only for women, widowers, or divorced men. Ginsburg argued that discriminating against a man “on the basis of sex” was equally unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. on the basis of sexhd
He was wrong.
