Ruth Bader Ginsburg discharged from hospital after surgery

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was discharged from the hospital Tuesday and is recovering at home after undergoing surgery last week to remove two nodules from her left lung, according to Kathleen Arberg, a Supreme Court spokeswoman.

The malignant nodules, discovered in November after Ginsburg fractured her ribs in a fall, were removed Friday at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

“There was no evidence of any remaining disease,” Arberg said in a statement last week, citing Ginsburg’s thoracic surgeon, Dr. Valerie W. Rusch. “Scans performed before surgery indicated no evidence of disease elsewhere in the body.”

Despite her hospitalization, Ginsburg, 85, still participated in a Friday court vote preventing the Trump administration from immediately enforcing its new policy of denying asylum to migrants who illegally cross the Mexican border. She is the most senior member of the court’s four-member liberal wing.

Ginsburg has notably refused to allow health complications to get in the way of her work. She has been treated twice for cancer and, in a 2013 interview, said she would stay on the court “as long as I can do the job full steam.”

In 2012, she broke two ribs without missing work. Two years later, she returned to work quickly after a heart procedure. Early last month, she fell at her office and went home. The next morning, a Thursday, she was hospitalized with three broken ribs from the fall. She was discharged the next day and worked from home.

Ginsburg, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993, has become wildly popular among Democrats for her dogged defense of progressive ideals, including as a women’s rights lawyer.

She has been given the affectionate nickname “Notorious RBG” and was the star of a well-received documentary this year. Actress Felicity Jones portrays her in “On the Basis of Sex,” a movie released this week about her life.