PASADENA, Calif. — A Pasadena-based federal judge is remembering her hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week as the country continues to mourn her loss.
Judge Wardlaw serves on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. She is the first Latina to be appointed to a federal appeals court. Her name was also on President Obama's short list of judges to replace Justice Ginsburg when she fell ill in 2009.
Judge Wardlaw has followed RBG's crusade for equal rights since she was a student at UCLA law.
“I’ve been reading her cases for all these years and she’s always been a hero to me,” Judge Wardlaw said. “You’ll see her voting on cases was always on the notion and principal of equal justice and moving that marker.”
She and RBG met socially a few times, but the most personal interaction they had was because of a 13-year-old girl named Savana Redding. Redding sued her school district in Arizona after administrators strip searched her looking for two pills of ibuprofen. Her case was heard in Judge Wardlaw’s court.
“It was me and 10 men,” Judge Wardlaw remembers. “We decided 6 to 5 that it was unconstitutional, that the search was intrusive in light of the minor infraction and caused her so much humiliation.”
Wardlaw wrote the majority opinion. The school district appealed and the case went all the way to the supreme court. Justice Ginsberg was the only woman on the court at that time. Her male peers made clear during oral arguments their struggle to understand the case.
“The questions that the men asked were so insensitive,” Judge Wardlaw said. Wardlaw assumed her court’s decision would be reversed. Then Ginsberg did something she had never done before; she took the case to the court of public opinion.
“Justice Ginsberg went to USA Today and she talked about the case while it was pending which was unprecedented,” Judge Wardlaw said. “She said to USA Today, they just don’t understand. They were never 13-year-old girls.”
The supreme court eventually upheld the decision.
Judge Wardlaw last spoke with Justice Ginsberg two years ago. Today, when the world feels like it needs some saving, dealing with RBG ‘s loss is even more difficult.
“It’s a very sad time, and a chaotic time, so to lose a hero at the same time is hard,” Judge Wardlaw said. “I think she’s one of a kind. I don’t see that duplicated in a long time.”