# For all his perceived

By [SI](https://paragraph.com/@hi444) · 2023-02-01

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For all his perceived reliability as a conservative bulwark, Luttig could befuddle the political right. He ruled that Title IX protected a female place-kicker on an all-male football team from gender discrimination. He upheld a Black defendant’s right to exclude a White juror who had displayed the Confederate flag. And in 2000 he declared that the constitutional right to [abortion](https://www.washingtonpost.com/abortion/?itid=lk_inline_manual_45) established with _Roe v. Wade_ had achieved the status of “super-stare decisis” — a term of his coining — because the Supreme Court said it had repeatedly upheld the case and that it was irrefutably embedded in the law at the time.

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*Originally published on [SI](https://paragraph.com/@hi444/for-all-his-perceived)*