Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Died at Age 87

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a liberal legend and feminist icon on the nation’s highest court, died Friday. She was 87.

Justice Ginsburg was only the second woman appointed to the United States Supreme Court. She passed away after a long battle with pancreatic cancer, the court said. 

Ginsburg’s passing signals the eruption of a new battle over the future of the high court, just weeks before the presidential election on November 3. The Court already has as conservative majority, thanks in part to President Donald Trump’s nominations of Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

Nominated to the high court in 1993 by President Bill Clinton, the late justice championed abortion rights, same-sex marriage, and health care in her rulings. Ginsburg was known affectionately among liberals as “the Notorious RBG.”

Ginsburg had announced in July that she was facing a “recurrence of cancer.” In addition to pancreatic cancer, Ginsburg had battled colon cancer and tumors in her lungs. 

She was also recently hospitalized to treat gallstones and, separately, an infection. During one of her hospital stays, Ginsburg called into Supreme Court arguments — which were being conducted over the phone, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic — and passionately defended the need to preserve women’s access to birth control.

The sudden vacancy creates an opportunity for GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has used his leadership of the Senate to ram through conservative nominees into the court system. 

In the days before her death, Ginsburg dictated a statement to her granddaughter that made it clear she did not want to be replaced by President Trump.

“My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed,” she said, according to NPR.

McConnell has already said he will reverse his own stance over whether or not a Supreme Court Justice can be approved close to an election. In 2016, McConnell famously blocked former President Barack Obama’s nominee to the high court, arguing that the voters should have a chance to weigh in by casting their votes in the presidential election first. After Trump won, Obama’s pick, Judge Merrick Garland, was dropped. 

This time, McConnell has declared himself fully prepared to flagrantly disregard his own  precedent. Asked in May 2019 what he’d do if a vacancy appeared in 2020, McConnell quipped, “Oh, we’d fill it.” 

In a statement, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said that the country has now lost “a justice of historic stature.”

“We at the Supreme Court have lost a cherished colleague,” he said. “Today we mourn but with confidence that future generations will remember Ruth Bader Ginsburg as we knew her, a tired and resolute champion of justice.”

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