In her fight for women’s rights, the then–ACLU lawyer Ruth Bader Ginsburg did something unexpected: She argued on behalf of men.

“It didn’t matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman,” says the Georgetown law professor Wendy Williams. “Because in most of those cases, the discrimination against the man was derivative of a prior and worse discrimination against the woman.”

Craig v. Boren involved Oklahoma frat boys, a drive-through convenience store, and gender-specific beer laws. The Supreme Court’s landmark 1976 decision was foundational in advancing equal rights for women and represented a key moment in the future justice’s career.

This story originally ran on More Perfect, a Radiolab spin-off about the Supreme Court.

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Insights In Sound - Chris Leonard