Ginsburg’s admirers line up to see her one last time
WASHINGTON» She had taught them something about persistence, so the loyal admirers of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg arrived at the Supreme Court nearly 12 hours before her body. Four of them stayed the night, and a dozen arrived before dawn. They came fromPennsylvania andMassachusetts, Vermont and Louisiana. Lawyers. A counselor. A Coast Guard officer. A single mom.
Theywatched as a black hearse arrived at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday, and from it emerged Ginsburg’s casket draped in an American flag. It was carried slowly up the steps, between dozens of the justice’s former law clerks, and inside the court, where a private ceremony was set to begin.
Outside, the crowds waited for the moment soon to come: when the casket would reemerge, and those in line would be allowed to pass it from a distance.
The first from the public to do so would be Mary and Vicki Migues-Jordan, who’d been waiting since 9:45 p.m. Tuesday night, when they opened their camp chairs, wrapped themselves in blankets, and settled in for hours of little sleep and long talks about what this woman had meant to them.
“When I first saw her, I remember thinking, ‘ they’re going to chew her up and spit her out,’ “Mary Migues-Jordan said. “But she was this tiny little thing who took over a room when she walked in.”
As an attorney, Mary MiguesJordan, 55, tried to emulate Ginsburg’s ability tomake every word count. She had a Ginsburg action figure and a sweatshirt with her face on it. But to her, there was so much more to the justice than the “notorious” version that decorated totebags. The couple were reminded of that this summer,
when the Court ruled that the 1964 Civil Rights Act protects gay, lesbian and transgender employees from discrimination based on sex. Their own son did not understand what the big deal was.
“The big deal is yesterday I could have been fired because of who I love, and it’s 2020,” Mary said.
Second in the line were Doug Smith, 53, and his daughter, a 21-year- old college senior, sitting on plastic chairs and wrapping themselves in blankets on the dark sidewalk. They had spent the entire night on street, arriving at about 10 p.m. the night before, after driving about four hours from Pittsburgh.
“The impact she’s had on my wife and my daughters, there’s just no way to envision what their lives would be like without the work of Justice Ginsburg,” he said. “I could not not be here. I had to come down and pay my respects.”
As soon as he saw the Supreme Court’s announcement about the week’s memorial services, Smith had texted his wife and daughters: “I’m going to D.C. Does anyone want to go with me?”
His older daughter, who was doing homework at the time, immediately responded that she would go with him, even though her college’s coronavirus restrictions prohibited her from leaving her campus. She declined to give her name because if her university found out she was off campus, she could lose her housing.
“I knew if it came down to it, I could stare down the university and say, ‘ This iswhere my values stand,’ “she said.
The higher the sun rose, the longer the line grew. Ginsburg began lying “in repose” about 11 a.m. Wednesday, after a private ceremony in the court. The casket will remain outside for two 11hour days, allowing thousands to come pay their respects by walking across the plateau near the bottom of the steps.