RBG Award gala to honor likes of Musk, Murdoch canceled after late justice’s family objects

A Washington, D.C., spring gala to honor Elon Musk, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Milken, Martha Stewart and Sylvester Stallone has been canceled, organizers said Monday.

The invitation-only celebration at the Library of Congress on April 13 was being organized to bestow Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award honors on the tech, media, finance, food and film luminaries.

On Monday, the chairman of the Opperman Foundation, which chooses honorees and organizes the event independent of the late Supreme Court justice's survivors and estate, said in a statement that the group was pulling the plug to avoid fueling controversy over the 2024 recipient list.

"Keeping in mind that our goal is only to do good, the foundation is not interested in creating controversy," Julie Opperman said. "It is not interested in generating a debate about whether particular honorees are worthy or not.

"The last thing we intended was to offend the family and friends of RBG," she continued. "Our purpose was only to remember her and to honor her leadership."

Last week, Trevor Morrison, a former clerk to Ginsburg and dean emeritus of the NYU School of Law, told Julie Opperman in a letter that family members want Ginsburg's name removed from the awards unless they return to their roots, including honoring "an extraordinary woman" with each award.

According to the letter, organizers this year opted to include men and changed the parameters of the honors without consulting Ginsburg's survivors.

Calling the list of honorees a "betrayal of the justice's legacy," the letter said, "It is deeply worrisome that the Foundation has decided to apply the new criteria to honor people who exhibit none of the values that animated the Justice’s career."

Columbia Law School professor Jane C. Ginsburg, the late justice's daughter, forwarded the letter, along with her own statement about the matter, which calls the list of honorees "an affront to the memory of our mother."

She said in the statement that family members support the sentiments in Morrison's letter.

“This year, the Opperman Foundation has strayed far from the original mission of the award and from what Justice Ginsburg stood for,” Jane Ginsburg said.

Neither she nor Morrison named or singled out anyone on this year's slate of honorees.

It wasn't clear whether Musk, Murdoch, Milken, Stewart or Stallone would still receive awards without gala ceremony. A spokesperson for the foundation responded to a question about whether the awards were considered valid by sending its cancellation statement, which said no further information was forthcoming.

The dust-up also drew enough attention that the Library of Congress issued a statement distancing itself from the awards ceremony and noting that it was to have served only as a venue.

"The award is not otherwise affiliated with the Library," it said.

Entertainer Barbra Streisand, who received a 2023 RBG Award, said in a statement Monday: "I join the Ginsburg family in condemning the choice of honorees this year. ... I strongly doubt she [Ginsburg] would approve of these awardees."

University of California, Berkeley School of Law professor Amanda L. Tyler, who co-wrote the book “Justice, Justice Thou Shalt Pursue: A Life’s Work Fighting for a More Perfect Union” with Ginsburg, said an award in her name should focus on the justice's lifelong fight against discrimination.

"Justice Ginsburg spent her life fighting to combat discrimination in all its many forms, to empower women to have control over their own destinies, and to open up opportunities for persons from all walks of life," she said in a statement.

The statement quoted a 2009 Ginsburg speech: "We will all profit from a more diverse, inclusive society, understanding, accommodating, even celebrating our differences, while pulling together for the common good."

Ginsburg was known for championing gender equity and civil rights. She died at age 87 in 2020, the year the first RBG Award was handed out with her blessing before she died, according to The Washington Post.

Ginsburg was friends with the late Dwight Opperman, who built wealth by publishing law books and digitizing them, the newspaper said.

According to Morrison's letter, the Opperman Foundation established the award in 2019. The following year at the Opperman Foundation Dinner, the letter continued, Ginsburg said she was “especially pleased” that the foundation had established the award “to honor women who have strived to make the world a better place for generations that follow their own, women who exemplify human qualities of empathy and humility, and who care about the dignity and well-being of all who dwell on planet Earth."

The first years of the RBG Award focused exclusively on honoring groundbreaking women, before it was widened this year to honor "trailblazing men and women," Morrison's letter said.

The Opperman Foundation, in an announcement naming the year's honorees last week, said Musk's dedication to free speech is "unwavering," though he blocked many journalists from seeing his posts and interacting with him on Twitter years before he bought it and renamed it X.

The foundation's statement called Murdoch, the executive chairman of the company behind Fox News, "the most iconic living legend in media." Last spring, the news network agreed to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems, whose CEO, John Poulos, said at the time that “Fox has admitted to telling lies” about the company's machines’ being involved in unproven voter fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Milken is the former "junk bond king" who served a fraction of a 10-year federal prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to violating securities-disclosure rules. He relaunched himself as a philanthropist and, in 2020, President Donald Trump granted him a pardon.

Stewart, who built an empire of home goods based on her television show about cooking and decor, served a five-month federal prison sentence in the mid-2000s after she was convicted of lying about stock trades.

Stallone's Academy Award-winning "Rocky," which he wrote and performed, turned him into a star overnight in 1976 while providing him with endless roles as good muscle in a bad world. Last year, his involvement in a Paramount+ reality show about his clan, "The Family Stallone," showed a caring, paternal side of the actor while exposing him to new fans.