Washington — Chief Justice John Roberts suffered a seizure at his summer home in Maine today, causing a fall that resulted in minor scrapes, Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said.
He will remain at a Maine hospital overnight.
Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the Penobscot Bay Medical Center, where he underwent a “thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern,” Arberg said in a statement.
Roberts had a similar episode in 1993, she said.
The incident occurred around 2 p.m. on a dock near the home in Port Clyde on Maine’s Hupper Island. Port Clyde, which is part of the town of St. George, is about 90 miles by car northeast of Portland, midway up the coast of Maine.
Roberts was taken by private boat to the mainland and then transferred to an ambulance, St. George Fire Chief Tim Polky said.
“He was conscious and alert when they put him in the rescue (vehicle) and took him to Penobscot Bay Medical Center,” Polky said. A spokesman at the Rockport hospital did not immediately return a call from The AP.
Named to the court by President Bush in 2005, Roberts is the youngest justice on a court in which the senior member, John Paul Stevens, is 87. Bush was informed of the hospitalization by his chief of staff, Josh Bolten, the White House said.
Roberts is married and the father of two young children.
Doctors called this afternoon’s incident “a benign idiopathic seizure,” Arberg said. The White House described the January 1993 episode as an “isolated, idiosyncratic seizure.”
Larry Robbins, a Washington attorney who worked with Roberts at the Justice Department in 1993, said he drove Roberts to work for several months after the incident. Robbins said Roberts never mentioned what the problem was, and he never heard of it happening again.
In 2001, Roberts described his health as “excellent,” according to Senate Judiciary Committee records.
Roberts became chief justice after the death of William Rehnquist in September 2005, although Bush had first chosen him to take Sandra Day O’Connor’s seat when she announced her retirement earlier that year.
The chief justice spent a couple of weeks in Europe earlier this month, teaching a course in Vienna and attending a conference in Paris. He was at the court in Washington late last week.
