Supreme Court justices have made hundreds of trips and public appearances in recent years. But only one sitting justice appears to have taken the unusual step of traveling with a medic: 69-year-old Justice Sonia Sotomayor.obtained by the nonpartisan court watchdog Fix the Court, which requested information about security for current and former Supreme Court justices.
Looming over it all is Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s fateful decision not to retire from the court under Democratic President Barack Obama, and the minimal party pressure she faced to do so. When Ginsburg ultimately died in September 2020, with Trump in the White House and only weeks before an election he would lose, Trump seized the opportunity to replace her with her ideological opposite.
The frequency with which she traveled with Marshals raises the likelihood that there would be records capturing her medical needs at a specific point in time but not those of the other current justices, five of whom are also in their 60s or 70s. Sotomayor appears to be the only justice for whom security agents are required to wear personal protective equipment, per the documents. But Sotomayor’s caution around COVID-19 due to her preexisting condition is already public knowledge. Sotomayor avoided in-person oral arguments until early 2022, and she was
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