Ginsburg hospitalized for 'possible infection'

The Supreme Court’s oldest justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was hospitalized Tuesday for treatment of “a possible infection,” a court spokesperson said in a statement.

Ginsburg, 87, was admitted to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore early Tuesday morning after being evaluated Monday night at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington due to symptoms that included “fever and chills.”

“She underwent an endoscopic procedure at Johns Hopkins this afternoon to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last August. The Justice is resting comfortably and will stay in the hospital for a few days to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment,” said court spokesperson Kathleen Arberg.

Ginsburg, a Clinton appointee who is the longest-serving member of the court’s liberal wing, has had several bouts of cancer.

Last August, after a photographer captured pictures of her entering a New York hospital, the court disclosed that she was on the verge of completing three weeks of treatment for a malignant tumor found on her pancreas.

In January, Ginsburg — now a pop culture icon known as "RBG" — said she was "cancer free."

In 2018, she had surgery on lung nodules that also turned out to be malignant. She later missed two weeks of oral arguments at the court.

In May of this year, Ginsburg also spent two nights at Johns Hopkins for treatment of a gallstone.

Ginsburg was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999 and pancreatic cancer in 2009, but the court said at that time that, after treatment, all indications were she was cancer-free.

Word of Ginsburg’s latest illness came just days after the court delivered its final opinions in cases argued this term — a term significantly interrupted by the coronavirus.

Due to the pandemic, the court scuttled its March and April argument sessions. About half the cases set for argument during those weeks were heard in May during the court’s first-ever telephone arguments. Ginsburg joined one day of those arguments from the hospital.

The other cases originally set to be argued earlier this year were moved to the fall.

Although the court officially entered its summer recess last week, work has continued on emergency matters. On Monday night, the same evening Ginsburg fell ill, the justices were trading legal opinions related to the Trump administration’s plan to restart federal executions.

Ginsburg joined all of her Democratic-appointed colleagues in dissent as the court’s conservative majority voted to allow the executions to proceed.