Ruth Bader Ginsburg Is Back in Action on the Supreme Court
Take a deep breath: Beloved Supreme Court Justice and Academy Award–nominated documentary subject Ruth Bader Ginsburg is back at work two months after undergoing surgery for lung cancer. TMZ filmed her arriving at Reagan airport in Washington, D.C., a video they deployed with the caption: “Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is on the move again . . . and it’s a big deal.” Rumors about Ginsburg’s health had reached a fevered tone after the 85-year-old justice missed a day of arguments in January, the first time she had done so since she joined the bench in 1993—despite this being Ginsburg’s third bout with cancer in 20 years. Ginsburg’s lung cancer was found when doctors noticed an abnormality in CT scans taken after she fell and fractured her ribs last November.
Ginsburg, a reliable liberal vote on the increasingly right-skewing Supreme Court (conservatives now occupy five of the nine seats, and any further vacancy among the court’s four liberals would mean a six-to-three majority), “has made no secret of her desire to serve on the nation’s highest court until someone more to her liking, not President Trump, is in the White House,” NPR wrote on Tuesday, noting once again that Ginsburg “has no plans to retire anytime soon.” Buzzfeed reported that the court’s public information office told reporters during Ginsburg’s recuperation that the justice “was working from home and recovering throughout January and she did participate in a handful of votes—including a 5-4 vote keeping a Louisiana abortion law on hold—taken by the court since her surgery.”
The court issued a statement in January stating that Ginsburg’s “recovery from surgery is on track,” that her doctors found no other evidence of “remaining disease” in post-surgery evaluation and no further treatment was needed. She is now walking more than a mile a day and is working out again with her trainer twice a week, according to NPR.
