RBG Is Back On The Supreme Court Bench For The First Time In Months

When the 85-year-old Supreme Court justice and feminist hero Ruth Bader Ginsburg was hospitalized to have a portion of her lung removed due to cancer, many people feared the worst. You can breath easy now, because Ruth Bader Ginsburg is back on the bench, hearing cases and responding like nothing ever happened.

Ginsburg actually returned to work on Friday, when the justices had a private meeting at the Supreme Court. This was her first time back since Dec. 21, when she had her lung surgery. She spent January recouping at home, and the surgery caused her to miss oral arguments for the first time in her career. At the time, though, a court spokesperson said that Ginsburg wasn't completely taking the time off; instead, she was still working remotely "on the basis of briefs, filings and transcripts," as CNBC reports.

Because of that work, she was able to participate in the decisions for 11 of the cases heard in January, per NPR. The court's schedule actually worked quite well with her recuperation schedule, as a "writing break" had already been scheduled for January. Now, Ginsburg's recovery has evidently progressed far enough that she won't need to keep working from home.

That's not all she's well enough to do, however. As NPR wrote, she's already back to seeing her personal trainer twice a week and walking more than a mile every day. Her presence on the bench, however, will likely be the simplest way of dispelling the disinformation that spread about Ginsburg's health status when someone noted that she wasn't in attendance at the State of the Union, as Mother Jones reports.

This led to numerous commentators on YouTube claiming that Ginsburg had disappeared or died, a suggestion which later spread to Twitter and right-wing media outlets.

"The photograph that was in the New York Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a photograph from last November," one Twitter commentator wrote on Saturday, after she had already reported back to work. "Still waiting for proof of life. And if she is not there, that makes John Roberts part of the scam."

As of Tuesday morning, false rumors that Ginsburg's recovery had somehow been faked were still flowing on Twitter.

Regardless, Ginsburg's recovery is very real, and many people are happy to hear about it — including the large group of celebrities who signed a get-well card for her, as People magazine reported. The group included Stephen Colbert, Lady Gaga, Bradley Cooper, Amy Adams, and the directors of the RBG documentary were the ones who put it together.

“After Justice Ginsburg’s surgery in December, pretty much every actor or filmmaker we met would ask us to pass on their personal good wishes to her,” RBG directors Julie Cohen and Betsy West wrote in a statement, according to the Associated Press. “We know RBG is a huge movie buff — from big Hollywood epics to small indie films — so we thought she’d get a kick out of a get well card from some of the biggest names in the film world.”