The entire Outten & Golden family was saddened to hear about the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but no one more than our partner Kathleen Peratis, a close friend of Justice Ginsburg.
Kathleen served as the director of the ACLU Women’s Rights Project from 1975 to 1979, during which she fought alongside Ginsburg on the gender discrimination cases the ACLU took to the Court. Of the six appeals Ginsburg argued before “the brethren,” she won five.
In the 2018 documentary “RBG,” Kathleen looked back on some of those landmark decisions and Ginsburg’s adherence to a successful “one step at a time” strategy:
Following the news of Justice Ginsburg’s passing, Kathleen appeared on WBUR-FM Boston’s “On Point” radio program to describe the impact of Ginsburg on the American legal landscape:
“The legal community lost a giant. She didn’t set out to change the world, but as she often said, she was the right person in the right place at the right time. She worked hard. She took everything very seriously. She developed a mission, and she pursued it. That’s what she would always tell young women who ask her what they should do.”
As this powerful New York Times video shows, Kathleen joined more than 100 of Justice Ginsburg’s law clerks on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court before joining Justice Ginsburg’s family for a private ceremony in the Court’s Great Hall.
