Ruth Bader Ginsburg can be seen climbing the steps of the Supreme Court in the final sequence to the film On the Basis of Sex, a movie which tells Ginsburg’s life story as a champion for gender equality. Specifically, On the Basis of Sex chronicles Ginsberg’s role as the attorney in a key gender equality case: Moritz v. Commissioner.
The Moritz case involved a man, Charles Moritz, who was attempting to receive a $600 tax exemption for using a caregiver for his dependent mother. Yet, Moritz was ineligible for such relief as he was never married and because “the deduction [was] limited to a woman, a widower or divorce, or a husband whose wife is incapacitated or institutionalized.”
Felicity Jones portrays a young Ginsburg who, after transferring from Harvard Law School and then graduating from Columbia Law School, begins teaching law at Rutgers Law School because no law firms would hire her due to her being a woman. When her husband Martin, a tax attorney who graduated from Harvard Law School, presents Ginsburg with the Moritz tax case, Jones’s character leaps at the opportunity to argue the case since it could not only potentially repeal gender discrimination but also because it involved discrimination against a man.
As the film progresses, it shows the hurdles Ginsburg must overcome to finally attain her time in the courthouse. For instance, her first attempt at receiving the help of the American Civil Liberties Union is unsuccessful and subsequent proceedings with the case are also riddled with obstacles.
Additionally, the film relays the struggles of being a parent. There are numerous examples of this, including when Ginsburg has to finish her law degree as she raises her infant child—Jane—and later on when she has fights with her teenage daughter.
Jane’s addition to the story provides an important element because her presence emphasizes the importance that winning the case had on not only Ginsburg but also Jane’s future.
The film is able to portray Ginsburg as a trailblazer, a woman who was able to overcome the institutional biases of society in order to help equalize the genders. In fact, in a speech delivered at a Harvard Law reunion, Ginsburg herself commented on the struggle of finding a job as a Jewish mother, “I was Jewish, a woman, and a mother. The first raised one eyebrow; the second, two; the third made me indubitably inadmissible.”
On the Basis of Sex is a great movie which not only recounts the life of the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg but also makes watching the process of a lawsuit fun and interesting. Unlike a documentary whose realism could have had the potential to bore watchers with the highly technical aspects of the law, On the Basis of Sex is able to dramatize the process in a manner that engaged the viewer. You are not only watching for the outcome of the result, you are watching to see the development of Ginsburg as an attorney and as a woman passionately poised to upend the unjust societal barriers placed on women.
After her death on Sept. 18, Focus Features and Magnolia Pictures announced that both On the Basis of Sex and the documentary produced about Ginsburg, RBG, will be re-released in 1,000 theatres.