The family of late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is sounding off about this year’s class of honorees for a female leadership award named after the liberal icon.
In a statement on Friday, the Ginsburg family called the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation’s decision to bestow its “Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award” on tech billionaire Elon Musk and media entrepreneur Rupert Murdoch, among others, “an affront to the memory of our mother and grandmother.”
According to The Washington Post, other honorees include film legend Sylvester Stallone, financier Michael Milken and lifestyle mogul Martha Stewart.
While the family did not specifically denounce any of the honorees, it said the foundation “has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for.”
“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,” the statement, obtained by the Post, said. “She was a singularly powerful voice for the equality and empowerment of women, including their ability to control their own bodies.”
Former Ginsburg clerk Trevor Morrison, who is also a former dean of New York University School of Law, told the Post he wrote to foundation Chair Julie Opperman on Thursday to express how “deeply worrisome” he believed it was that the award was being given to people whom he said “exhibit none of the values that animated the Justice’s career, and none of the things that she herself emphasized when celebrating the inauguration of the RBG Award.”
A friend of the late lawyer and legal publisher Dwight Opperman, Ginsburg reportedly gave her approval in 2019 for his family’s foundation to create an award for powerful women in her name.
The honor was first awarded before Ginsburg’s death in 2020 and was intended to recognize “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.”
The justice’s family members told the Post they were not consulted in selecting winners and were not notified about any changes to the award. Friday would have been Ginsburg’s 91st birthday and a perfect opportunity, they said, for the foundation to change course.
The Opperman Foundation told the Post Friday it has no response to the brouhaha over the award.
Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Wells, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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