Of the two women nominated in 2013 to seats on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, conservative and anti-abortion groups objected most vocally to civil rights litigator and law professor Cornelia Pillard. But it was former appellate specialist Patricia Millett who wrote the searing abortion rights dissent last week on behalf of a pregnant immigrant teen that rocketed across social media as a must-read.

In Garza v. Hargan, the government argued that its refusal to “facilitate” the detained teen's abortion did not present an undue burden on her right to an abortion—assuming she had such a right as someone who had entered the country illegally.

Millett dissented from the 2-1 panel ruling that blocked the teen, detained in Texas, from getting an abortion immediately and gave the government until Oct. 31 to find her a sponsor. She wrote in her 10-page dissent:

“Forcing her to continue an unwanted pregnancy just in the hopes of finding a sponsor that has not been found in the past six weeks sacrifices J.D.'s constitutional liberty, autonomy, and personal dignity for no justifiable governmental reason. The flat barrier that the government has interposed to her knowing and informed decision to end the pregnancy defies controlling Supreme Court precedent.”

Millett was on the D.C. Circuit panel with Republican-appointed Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Karen LeCraft Henderson. The American Civil Liberties Union on Sunday urged the full D.C. Circuit to reconsider the panel decision. The ACLU prominently pointed to Millett's dissent. Several states, participating as friends of the court, on Monday told the D.C. Circuit they “agree” with Millett.

Two Supreme Court cases, according to Millett, should have decided the teenager's case: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed a woman's right to abortion, and the 2016 opinion in Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, striking down Texas restrictions on clinics that perform abortions.

“What is forcing J.D. to carry on this pregnancy is not J.D.'s choice,” Millett wrote. “It is not Texas law. It is the federal government's refusal to allow an abortion to go forward. The government's refusal to release J.D. from custody is not just a substantial obstacle; it is a full-on, unqualified denial of and flat prohibition on J.D.'s right to make her own reproductive choice.”

There's little in Millett's experience at her former firm—Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld—or her time on the bench that would predict her fiery analysis of the facts surrounding the teen's detainment. Millett's dissent “taught me things about her I didn't know,” said Thomas Goldstein of Washington's Goldstein & Russell, a former Akin Gump partner. Goldstein and Millett co-chaired the firm's Supreme Court and appellate practice.

“We worked together for years. She is not an ideologue,” Goldstein said Monday. “She is always straight down the middle. Any time a judge writes about abortion it can be fraught. It's clear she feels strongly about the right involved. It will be really interesting to see how she leads the left on this. It's the most significant thing she has written.”

Millett's nomination to the D.C. Circuit garnered broad bipartisan support, including from seven former U.S. solicitors general of both parties, and she was described as “supremely qualified” and “unfailingly fair-minded.” At the same time, Republicans questioned Pillard over her academic writings on such topics as reproductive rights.

The foundation of Millett's dissent in the pregnant teen's case is perhaps manifest in her volunteer work on behalf of abused and homeless women and other powerless communities—and her connections to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg as a Role Model

At a recent event on women in the Supreme Court, Millett spoke about her admiration for Ginsburg.

“I've told Justice Ginsburg if there had been no 'her,' there probably would have been no 'me.' She has been my role model. When I came on the D.C. Circuit, they have closets where you keep your robes and they keep the plaques of all the judges who preceded you. I begged and pleaded to get her closet because it meant so much to me.”

Ginsburg, a fierce defender as a women's rights litigator—and then later as a judge—brought on-the-ground knowledge to the court, Millett said. She noted, in particular, the case of a 13-year-old middle school girl who was strip-searched at school when suspected of having drugs.

“She was able to tell what it's like to be a teenage girl and what that feels like, and your sense of bodily integrity,” Millett said. “You can never know, but I think it had an important impact on the outcome of the case.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Millett developed a sense of the vulnerabilities of certain segments of society early in her legal career.

As a clerk to the late Judge Thomas Tang of the Ninth Circuit, Millett served weekly meals to the homeless on the streets of Phoenix. She also volunteered at a day care center devoted to children who lived in homeless or battered women's shelters and volunteered directly with the battered women's shelter.

During her time as assistant to the U.S. solicitor general in the U.S. Justice Department, she was a literacy tutor, an effort she continued for almost 20 years. Millett is among the leaders of most cases argued by a female lawyer at the Supreme Court.

In her answers to the Senate Judiciary Committee's questionnaire on her nomination to the D.C. Circuit, Millett said she was engaged in the homeless ministries through her church, such as sleeping overnight as a monitor, providing fresh produce to local homeless shelters and visiting sick, grieving and home-bound members of the church community.

Pro Bono Advocate for Refugees

In private practice in 2009, Millett helped draft an amicus brief in the Supreme Court case Negusie v. Mukasey on behalf of Human Rights First, Human Rights Watch, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the U.S. Commission for Refugees and Immigrants.

The issue in Negusie, Millett and Akin partner Steven Schulman wrote, was “whether a refugee who was forced, by threats of severe harm or violence, to inflict harm on another, must be excluded from asylum, and may be returned to a country where his life and freedom would be threatened, without regard for the fact that he acted under duress.”

Failing to consider duress, Millett and Schulman argued, violated “the text of the statute, negates the humanitarian objectives” underpinning the Refugee Act of 1980, and also violated treaty obligations. Their brief offered the court examples of children who were forced into military service and suffered torture and sexual violence during their conscription.

The justices ruled for the asylum seeker.

Read more:

Morning Coats and First Arguments: Female SCOTUS Lawyers on Breaking Barriers

D.C. Circuit Declines to Allow Pregnant Undocumented Teen to Get Abortion, For Now

Female Lawyers Tell the Supreme Court About Their Own Abortions

Judges Reflect on Their Former Firm's Pro Bono Work

Patricia Millett Reflects on Clerking, Diversity

Where Women Lawyers Succeed: NLJ Scorecard Reveals Which Firms Make the Grade