{"id":353588,"date":"2026-09-22T14:56:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:56:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353588\/"},"modified":"2026-09-22T14:56:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-22T14:56:08","slug":"op-ed-a-personal-reflection-on-gloria-steinem-and-her-influence-on-the-courts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/353588\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-ed | A personal reflection on Gloria Steinem, and her influence on the courts"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"Judge\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Judge E. Danielle Jose-Decker was appointed March 13, 2026, as administrative judge of the Third Judicial District. <\/p>\n

Photo courtesy New York State Unified Court System<\/p>\n

Much was written about Gloria Steinem, who died on Sept. 2 at her home in New York City at 92<\/a>, as a journalist, as the co-founder of Ms. magazine, the National Women\u2019s Political Caucus, and the Ms. Foundation, and as a recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.<\/p>\n

I want to note something narrower, and closer to our work in the courts<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

On May 6, 1970, Steinem testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments in support of the Equal Rights Amendment. She spent most of her testimony taking apart what she called sex-based myths, and she made a point of observing that, like racial myths, they had already been written into our laws. Her conclusion was this: the law makes much more sense when it decides to deal with \u201cindividuals, not groups bundled together by some condition of birth.\u201d<\/p>\n

That is not a slogan. It is a description of what we are supposed to be doing in our courtrooms.\n<\/p>\n

The lesson holds 56 years later because the myths rarely announce themselves. They do not arrive in a courtroom labeled as bias.\n<\/p>\n

They arrive as an assumption about which litigant is credible, which parent is the natural caretaker, which witness is emotional and which is merely forceful, and about which attorney can be talked over three times in an hour without anyone noticing. They arrive as a shortcut, and shortcuts are what a busy calendar invites.<\/p>\n

Gender fairness work is the daily discipline of refusing that shortcut. It is the deliberate practice of seeing the individual in front of us rather than the category we expect.<\/p>\n

I want to say a word to our Town and Village Court justices, in particular. In many of our neighborhoods, you are the only judge a person will ever appear before, often without counsel, frequently at night, and usually on the worst day of that person\u2019s year. The protections that operate elsewhere in the system, the appellate record, the second set of eyes, the attorney who knows the practice, are thinner in your courtrooms.<\/p>\n

That places the burden Steinem described squarely on you, individually, in the moment. It is real work, and it is not always visible.\n<\/p>\n

Steinem did the public, national, structural version of that work. Our work is quieter and happens one case at a time, in courtrooms across the 3rd Judicial District. It is the same work.<\/p>\n

Her family remembered her yesterday as an independent spirit who kept working for equality until the end. We can honor that best by continuing the work in the rooms we are responsible for.<\/p>\n

Hon. E. Danielle Jose-Decker is the Administrative Judge of the Third Judicial District.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Judge E. Danielle Jose-Decker was appointed March 13, 2026, as administrative judge of the Third Judicial District. Photo…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[131918,419,95464,65000,27026,131919,2812,131920,1179,91075,10054,9,11,10,131921,131922,54385],"class_list":["post-353588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-courtroom-fairness","tag-courts","tag-equal-rights-amendment","tag-gender-bias","tag-gender-equality","tag-gender-fairness","tag-gloria-steinem","tag-judicial-bias","tag-judicial-ethics","tag-judicial-system","tag-judiciary","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-third-judicial-district","tag-town-and-village-courts","tag-womens-rights"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}