Honoree Profile: Isabelle Katz Pinzler

Isabelle Katz Pinzler succeeded Ruth Bader Ginsburg as Director of the ACLU Women's Rights Project where, from 1978 to 1994, she led the litigation of groundbreaking cases in women's rights. Early in Pinzler's tenure there, Ginsburg continued to serve as general counsel, advising the staff on litigation strategy and supervising the writing of Supreme Court briefs. Bader Ginsburg is remembered as a valued leader, a thorough editor and above all, a beloved and respected teacher.

After graduating from Boston University School of Law in 1970, Pinzler worked in neighborhood legal services offices, first in Boston and later in Cleveland representing poor–mostly women–clients in welfare hearings and threatened evictions. From 1973 to 1978, she was staff attorney and then Deputy Director of the National Employment Law Project,a legal services support center. While there, she brought, among others, a key equal pay case against major office-building owners and cleaning contractors in New York City for paying women less than men doing equal work, and another case challenging sex discrimination in CETA (the federal jobs program).

After leaving the ACLU, Pinzler served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, the largest civil rights enforcement agency in the country. For about a year, she was acting head of that division, where she ensured that the proportion of sex discrimination cases, especially in employment, was significantly increased.

Later, she was Director of the Project on Federalism of the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (now Legal Momentum) and a Visiting Professor of Law at New York Law School where she taught sex discrimination, employment law and family law. She is currently special counsel at the National Coalition Against Censorship.

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