On what would have been her 91st birthday, March 15th, family and friends of Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG, 1923-2020) responded with forceful opposition to the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation decision to radically change the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award.

On Wednesday, the Foundation had announced that the award in RBG’s name would be presented to this slate of five:

1. Elon Musk, racist and antisemite
2. Martha Stewart, a felon
3. Michael Milken, a felon
4. Robert Murdoch, owner of the leading source of political disinformation in the United States
5. Sylvester Stallone, repeatedly accused of sexual assault

From Mother Jones:

Attaching Ginsburg’s name to Musk, who has amplified racist and antisemitic posts and ideas on X, and Murdoch, whose Fox News purposefully spread Trump’s disinformation about the 2020 election and has repeatedly deployed falsehoods to challenge and undermine the values that Ginsburg fought for her entire life, seemed an odd and inappropriate choice. That’s what Ginsburg’s family believes.

The 2024 nominees have nothing in common with the four previous honorees.

• On Valentine’s Day 2020, RBG presented the first award to civic leader and philanthropist Agnes Gund.
• 2021, Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second.
• 2022, Diane von Furstenberg
• 2023, Barbra Streisand

Foundation chair Julie Opperman contributed about $250,000 to Donald Trump and other Republican organizations in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, according to Mother Jones. Brendan V. Sullivan, Jr. is the award chair. Sullivan, 82, may be best known for defending U.S. Marine Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North during the Iran-Contra scandal. Chairing the event: Amy Baier, 46, is married to Bret Baier, Fox News chief political anchor.

Family outraged

The family was blindsided and insulted by the 2024 announcement.

Jane C. Ginsburg, her daughter and a law professor at Columbia University, said that “this year’s slate of awardees is an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother… The Justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the Justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse this award (emphasis added).”

In a written statement, the family said:

Her legacy is one of deep commitment to justice and to the proposition that all persons deserve what she called “equal citizenship stature” under the Constitution. She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies.

As it was originally conceived and named, the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award honored that legacy by recognizing “an extraordinary woman who has exercised a positive and notable influence on society and served as an exemplary role model in both principles and practice.” This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.

According to the Washington Post, the Foundation “has no response to the calls to amend the award.”

On Friday, Trevor Morrison, New York University professor of law and former clerk for Justice Ginsburg, told Foundation chair Julie Opperman that he was “appalled” by the selection. According to Morrison, Justice Ginsburg was involved with and accepted the original award criteria.

Morrison told Mother Jones that the Foundation had not consulted Ginsburg’s family about the awardees.

He informed Opperman that Ginsburg’s two children, Jane and James Ginsburg, “have indicated to me that, unless the original award criteria, as accepted by Justice Ginsburg, are restored, they very much want their mother’s name to be removed from the award… the decision to bestow upon them the particular honor of the RBG Award is a striking betrayal of the Justice’s legacy.”

From the prior TMV report

The first point, that the Foundation is financially questionable, has not yet made national news.

1. The Dwight D. Opperman Foundation filed its last IRS 990 form in 2020. Assets: $0. According to the Library of Congress, the Foundation donated $1,000,000 that year…

How could it hire The Brand Guild to be its “agency of record” for the 2022 event? And Sunshine Sachs Morgan & Lylis for the 2023 event? Ditto.
 

2. Someone registered the domain name for the Foundation in 2012. It is currently active, but the website has been “under construction” since 2021.

 

3. Surprise! Martha Stewart was a member of the 2023 awards committee! So was Stallone’s wife (h/t abtnatural.bsky.social).

 

4. Stallone was a featured guest at the 2022 event.

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KATHY GILL, Associate Editor

Known for gnawing at complex questions like a terrier with a bone. Digital evangelist, writer, teacher. Transplanted Southerner; teach newbies to ride motorcycles. @kegill (Twitter and Mastodon.social); wiredpen.com

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