I’ve been reading Linda Greenhouse’s reports for The New York Times for many years. She is an advocacy journalist, which is to say, not a journalist at all. Read this story about today’s Supreme Court ruling. The case required that the Court construe Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids, among other things, sex discrimination in the workplace. Greenhouse makes it seem as though the Court’s ruling was raw politics—the conservative majority siding with those nasty old employers rather than with poor, oppressed workers. It was nothing of the sort. The Court’s job is to interpret and apply the statute, which reflects a policy choice made by Congress. It is not to rewrite the statute in accordance with its own values. If Congress doesn’t like the Court’s interpretation, it can amend the statute. That’s how our democracy works. Here is how Greenhouse begins her report:

The Supreme Court made it harder today for many workers to sue their employers for discrimination in pay, insisting in a 5-to-4 decision on a tight timeframe to file such cases.

If she were honest, she would have said this:

The Supreme Court today enforced Congress’s judgment that employees who believe they are victims of workplace discrimination must file a formal complaint with a federal agency within 180 days after their pay was set.

See the difference? Note that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissenting opinion is little more than a policy argument. That sort of argument belongs in Congress, not in a court. Justice Samuel Alito was right in pointing this out. Justice Alito understands the role of a judge. Justice Ginsburg does not. Justice Ginsburg is a legislator manqué.