Justice Kavanaugh tests positive for coronavirus, will not be in court for opening

Then-Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh walks through a hallway in the Dirksen Senate Office Building en route to a confirmation hearing in September 2018. (Calla Kessler/The Washington Post)

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh will participate in next week’s Supreme Court hearings remotely from his home after testing positive Thursday for the coronavirus, the court said Friday night.

The court’s public information office announced earlier Friday that the justice had a routine coronavirus test on Thursday and was informed later that night that he had tested positive.

“He has no symptoms and has been fully vaccinated since January,” the statement said.

The court said that the other justices, all of whom have been vaccinated, had tested negative last Monday, when the court gathered for its private conference, and that Kavanaugh tested negative that day as well.

Friday night, the court said the justices who attended Friday’s ceremonial swearing-in of Justice Amy Coney Barrett tested negative, including retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

The symbolic ceremony was delayed after Barrett’s confirmation to the court last October because of the pandemic. Besides the justices, a limited number of friends and family members witnessed the event in the grand courtroom.

More than two dozen people who attended President Donald Trump’s announcement at the White House of Barrett as his nominee in September 2020 later tested positive.

Kavanaugh was seen in the Capitol late Thursday wearing a face mask and with his security detail. The Office of Attending Physician at the Capitol provides care to Supreme Court justices.

The court said that Kavanaugh’s wife and daughters are also fully vaccinated, and that they tested negative Thursday.

Paul Kane contributed to this report.