US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been hospitalised for a possible infection. The second woman to be appointed as Supreme Court Justice in the US has been admitted to The John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore.
A known spokesperson for gender justice and gender parity, Ginsburg was initially evaluated at Sibley Memorial Hospital in Washington, D.C. on Monday night after experiencing fever and chills. She underwent an endoscopic procedure at Johns Hopkins on Tuesday to clean out a bile duct stent that was placed last August.
She is expected to stay in the hospital for a few days while continuing to receive intravenous antibiotic treatment.
Ginsburg is known to have been continuing her job without much interruption despite being unwell.
The notorious RBG, as she is fondly known as, was treated for three ribs she fractured after a fall in the office. In August 2019, she was treated for pancreatic cancer. As a result, her health has come under increased scrutiny as the Supreme Court grapples with wide-reaching cases that can transform American jurisprudence.
Ginsburg is considered an iconic justice, one of whose notable cases was opening the Virginia Military Institute for women. Two appointments to the US Supreme Court were made by President Donald Trump during his tenure at the White House—Neil Gorsuch in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, both justices with a conservative tilt.
Her dissents in recent years have continued to energise Democrats. A major dissent note she wrote in 2013, was when the court majority issued a milestone decision rolling back voting rights protections.
Ginsburg filed a fierce dissent earlier in July challenging the court’s decision that allowed the Trump administration to expand exemptions for employers who have religious or moral objections to complying with the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate.
In 2018, a documentary of Ginsburg’s incredible life was released. Ginsberg is considered to be a tough yet elegant justice, who took on cases not only of discrimination against women, but also where men faced discrimination.
Ginsburg has also been for women’s choice when it comes to abortion and fought for rights of undocumented young immigrants and the rights of LGBTQ people in the workplace.
Ginsburg, who was from Brooklyn, was nominated by then president Bill Clinton in 1993 and has served longer than most current members of the court.
While studying law at Harvard, she was one of only a handful of women in a student body of 500. She was married to Marty Ginsburg, a lawyer for 50 years, until his death. She has two children.
