On the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, then-Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg authored an opinion with profound implications not only for the law of taxation but also for the role of courts in ending racial discrimination in education. The case, Wright v. Regan, involved the dramatic intersection of the income tax law and equal protection obligations of federal authorities under the Constitution’s Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The precise technical legal issue before her was procedural – whether parents of black schoolchildren had standing to challenge the grant of federal tax-exempt status to racially segregated private schools – but it was hardly arcane or narrow. In affirming that standing existed and reversing the contrary decision of the District Court below, Judge Ginsburg opined that the tax benefits of exempt status constituted significant financial assistance and that the provision of such assistance to racially segregated private schools – so-called “seg academies” – violated equal protection obligations imposed by the Constitution.

Judge Ginsburg’s decision was unfortunately reversed on appeal by a divided Supreme Court, which ruled that the plaintiffs did not have standing because they lacked a sufficiently concrete interest in the outcome of the litigation. She nevertheless provided a persuasive and coherent defense of the right of victims of racial discrimination in education to seek redress in the courts, and strong dissents from Justices Brennan and Stevens (joined by Justice Blackmun) supported her position. She thus created a benchmark that future Supreme Courts may use to revise a Supreme Court majority decision that appears, at least to this observer, as fundamentally wrong and fundamentally flawed. Her opinion in Wright also offers ways of understanding the later development of educational equal protection doctrine, including Ginsburg’s seminal decision in the Virginia Military Institute case.