Supreme Court Confirms Chief Justice Roberts Was Hospitalized After Hitting His Head
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts cut his head in a fall he suffered last month and was hospitalized afterward, a court spokeswoman has confirmed.
Roberts, 65, required sutures to close the wound sustained after his June 21 fall at the Chevy Chase Club, according to The Washington Post. He was taken by ambulance to the hospital, the outlet reported.
Roberts has suffered seizures in 1993 and in 2007, though Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathleen Arberg told The Post that doctors have ruled out the possibility that he suffered another in connection with last month’s fall. Instead, she said, doctors believe Roberts was dehydrated.
The fall was not revealed by Roberts, and was only disclosed in response to media inquiries.
Federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, are not required to issue reports about their health.
The source who initially told The Post of the incident said Roberts’ head was covered in blood as a result of the fall.
“The Chief Justice was treated at a hospital on June 21 for an injury to his forehead sustained in a fall while walking for exercise near his home,” Arberg told The Post.
“The injury required sutures, and out of an abundance of caution, he stayed in the hospital overnight and was discharged the next morning. His doctors ruled out a seizure. They believe the fall was likely due to light-headedness caused by dehydration,” the statement said.
“The injury was not significant; he stayed overnight out of an abundance of caution and went home first thing in the morning,” Arberg added to CNN.
In 2007, Roberts fell from a dock after suffering what’s known as a “benign idiopathic seizure,” which means the seizure had no identifiable cause.
The 1993 seizure Roberts suffered took place while he was golfing, and was disclosed during his 2005 confirmation.
The Supreme Court has not met in public since March due to the current health crisis. Roberts has not been absent for any of the court’s remote work sessions.
In a court with sharply divided liberal and conservative wings, Roberts, who was nominated by former President George W. Bush, has emerged as a swing vote.
In June, shortly before his fall, he joined liberal justices in blocking President Donald Trump from dismantling the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.
“The dispute before the court is not whether [the Department of Homeland Security] may rescind DACA. All parties agree that it may. The dispute is instead primarily about the procedure the agency followed in doing so,” Roberts wrote in his majority opinion.
“We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action,” he said.
“Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients. That dual failure raises doubts about whether the agency appreciated the scope of its discretion or exercised that discretion in a reasonable manner.”
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