Ginsburg back at work with doctors’ clean bill of health
January arguments justice missed were her first in 25 years.
Justice Ruth WASHINGTON —
Bader Ginsburg returned to the Supreme Court on Friday to participate in a private conference at which the justices considered adding cases to the court’s docket, a court spokeswoman said. It was Ginsburg’s first appearance at the court since undergoing cancer surgery in December.
Among the cases under consideration at Friday’s conference were ones on whether the Trump administration may add a question on citizenship to the census and whether a federal law barring employment discrimination applies to gay men and lesbians.
Ginsburg, 85, missed two weeks of arguments in January but participated in the cases by reading briefs and transcripts. She is expected to be on the bench Tuesday when the court returns from its four-week midwinter break.
Ginsburg has suffered a number of health setbacks over the years but had never before missed an argument in her 25 years on the court.
Surgeons removed two malignant nodules from Ginsburg’s left lung on Dec. 21. The court has said the surgery was successful and that she is cancer free.
“Post-surgery evaluation indicates no evidence of remaining disease, and no further treatment is required,” Kathleen Arberg, a court spokeswoman, said.
Doctors found the nodules during tests after a fall in November in which Ginsburg fractured her ribs. She had broken her ribs once before, in 2012. In 2014, she underwent a heart procedure.
Ginsburg has been treated for cancer twice before, and attributed her survival partly to the medical care she received at the National Institutes of Health.
“Ever since my colorectal cancer in 1999, I have been followed by the NIH,” she said in the 2013 interview. “That was very lucky for me because they detected my pancreatic cancer at a very early stage” in 2009.
She did not miss any arguments after the earlier procedures. She was also on the bench in 2010 on the day after the death of her husband, Martin Ginsburg.
Last week, Ginsburg made her first public appearance since her recent surgery at an evening of music celebrating her life.
But she skipped President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address the following night.
Ginsburg is the senior member of the court’s four-member liberal wing. Trump has appointed two new members to the Supreme Court, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, moving it considerably to the right.
Should he name Ginsburg’s replacement, Republican appointees would outnumber Democratic ones 6-3.