2019—“I dissent!,” exclaims Sixth Circuit judge Bernice Donald in Fowler v. Benson. The panel majority rejects a challenge to a Michigan law that requires that a person’s driver’s license be suspended when that person has failed to pay fines. But Donald opines that enforcement of that law against indigent drivers “without regard to their ability to pay and without affording them reasonable payment alternatives” violates their due process rights.
2022—Happy Mother’s Day! No thanks to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who in 1974 co-authored a report proposing that Congress abolish Mother’s Day and Father’s Day and replace them with an androgynous Parents’ Day. Observing Parents’ Day would, she explained, be “more consistent with a policy of minimizing traditional sex-based differences in parental roles.”
In that same report, the oh-so-“moderate” Ginsburg stated her strong sympathy for the proposition that there is a constitutional right to prostitution and a constitutional right to bigamy; criticized the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts for perpetuating stereotyped sex roles; and urged that prisons be co-ed rather than single sex. (See relevant excerpts from the report.)