For instance, in establishing that the two men who brought the case against the male-only draft registration had standing — that they actually suffered harm from the fact that they had to register while women don’t — Judge Miller quoted a line from a 1984 Supreme Court decision, Heckler v. Mathews: “Discrimination itself, by perpetuating ‘archaic and stereotypic notions,’ can cause serious noneconomic injuries to those persons who are personally denied equal treatment solely because of their membership in a disfavored group.”

Heckler v. Mathews was not one of Ruth Ginsburg’s cases; she was by that time a federal appeals court judge. But the case is in a direct Ginsburg line of descent. The phrase “archaic and stereotypic notions” comes from a 1982 opinion by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan. One of Justice O’Connor’s first opinions — she had been on the Supreme Court for less than a year — this important sex discrimination decision found unconstitutional the exclusion of men from a state-run nursing program. Any “gender-based classification,” Justice O’Connor wrote, “must be applied free of any fixed notions concerning the roles and abilities of males and females.”

For this proposition, Justice O’Connor cited a 1973 Supreme Court decision, Frontiero v. Richardson. This decision, invalidating a military benefits program’s built-in assumption that husbands could not be considered their wives’ dependents. The case was Ruth Ginsburg’s first Supreme Court argument.

I found much to admire in Judge Miller’s opinion, particularly the way he dealt with the government’s request to delay any decision in order to give time for a federal commission to come up with a recommendation to Congress on what to do about draft registration. Judge Miller responded that Congress has been debating the subject “for decades with no definite end in sight.” He said that “the court’s time and effort is likely best spent on the case at this stage, rather than at some indefinite time in the future.”

I don’t know what will happen next with draft registration. It’s not true that women now have to register, as the lead plaintiff, the National Coalition for Men, proclaims on its website, Judge Miller did not issue an injunction or dictate a remedy. The remedy for an equal-protection violation is to correct the inequality, either by placing the burden on both classes — in this instance, requiring women to register — or by eliminating registration for everyone. Judges faced with such a choice try to figure out what Congress would have intended.

The Supreme Court explained this approach most recently in an opinion two years ago by Justice Ginsburg in an immigration case concerning a statute that favored unwed mothers over unwed fathers in their ability to confer American citizenship on a child born overseas. The court’s remedy for the constitutional violation it found was to achieve equality between parents by increasing the burden on mothers rather than reducing it for fathers.

Of course, the Trump administration might decide to appeal in the draft registration case. An appeal would go to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, one of the most government-friendly of the federal appeals courts. Where the government’s interest actually lies, though, is far from clear. The military has no appetite for reinstating a draft, which ended in 1973. Women now make up 16 percent of the enlisted forces and 18 percent of the officer corps. The culture wars have moved on to other targets. The courts might save Congress from itself. It’s happened before.

Still, it’s hardly out of the question that the issue would reach the Supreme Court. I’d like to think that it’s an easy case by now, even for the most conservative justices. But even if it proves possible to get a good debate going, the argument would inevitably take place on Ruth Ginsburg’s ground. Young women these days may tattoo her image on their biceps, and mothers may dress little girls in R.B.G. costumes for Halloween. But at the end of the day, as this case shows us, it’s the law that matters, the law that Ruth Ginsburg made and is making still.

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