For nearly 50 years, conservatives waged war against Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling that enshrined a constitutional right to an abortion. By the time Donald Trump was in the White House, one person more than anyone else stood between Roe and its demise: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But perhaps the second-most important person was Bryant Johnson, the personal trainer who helped keep Ginsburg alive.
“Gotta make it through to the next election,” Ginsburg told Johnson during the Trump administration. She died just 46 days before the 2020 presidential election. The constitutional right to an abortion died shortly after.
Johnson, 59, never saw the twice-a-week training sessions at the Supreme Court gym, with its 16 marble columns and its 13-ton bronze doors, as any more important than getting in a quick lift at the Planet Fitness about a mile away.
“What political party you are, it doesn’t matter, because a push-up is a push-up is a push-up,” Johnson tells me.
Ginsburg started training with Johnson and doing 20 daily push-ups just before Bush v. Gore, in 1999. (At the Supreme Court, time is measured in cases.) Johnson, a records manager at D.C.’s federal court, had spent more than a decade in a Special Forces unit in the military, during which he learned about fitness. He decided to turn his hobby into a job and began training colleagues at the courthouse gym after work.
There’s no network like a word-of-mouth one among government workers, so soon enough he went from training a docket clerk to a courtroom deputy, to a federal judge named Douglas Ginsburg, to Justice Ginsburg. His job at the courthouse meant he dealt with secretive documents, which gave his clients a sense of trust. “Being able to, for lack of a better word, keep your mouth shut is very important to some people of high stature,” Johnson says.
Over time, he helped the Supreme Court’s liberal wing build muscle, landing clients such as Justices Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan. Kagan enjoyed boxing with Johnson, while Breyer preferred riding the stationary bike and swimming.
“What political party you are, it doesn’t matter, because a push-up is a push-up is a push-up.”
Johnson’s public image became entwined with Ginsburg’s. In 2017, he wrote The RBG Workout, an exercise book detailing the octogenarian’s training regimen, which included planks, one-legged squats, shoulder presses, and cable rows.
In the spring of 2020, their two decades of training came to an abrupt stop with the pandemic, when everyone in D.C.—including the Supreme Court’s nine justices—was ordered to stay home. “I tried to film some videos of myself to give to her granddaughter and to her daughter to show the justice what to do,” Johnson recalls. “I tried to make the videos as simple as possible.” He demonstrated exercises using a resistance band anchored to a door. But Johnson is no Richard Simmons, and Ginsburg’s at-home workouts couldn’t yield the same results as in-person training.
The hope of returning to the gym with Ginsburg evaporated on September 18, 2020, when his phone began buzzing one evening. He turned on the television and saw the headlines announcing her death. He turned off his phone off for weeks.
Johnson no longer trains members of the Supreme Court, and he’s content with his run at the nation’s most exclusive gym. “I worked up there for 20-plus years … That ship has sailed,” he says. Now Johnson, who lives in D.C. with his fiancée, trains only a handful of federal judges, as well as a few clients outside of the judicial system.
Had the coronavirus not locked down the country, Johnson believes, Ginsburg would have lived to the 2020 election. Johnson preaches the importance of mind, body, and soul. While the justice kept her mind sharp by working on cases remotely, he says she couldn’t nourish her soul by attending the opera or maintain her body with sessions at the gym. “Two of the three components were missing.”
Shortly after his client’s death, Johnson read about a private ceremony at the Supreme Court’s Great Hall for Ginsburg’s closest colleagues and friends. He was miffed that he wasn’t included. “I was kind of like, ‘Oh damn, I didn’t even get an invite to that,’” he tells me. “I knew the justice in ways probably nobody else really knew.”
Later, he received an invitation to visit the U.S. Capitol, where Ginsburg lay in state, the first woman to do so. The only problem? The invitation came in after the R.S.V.P.’s closed. “I guess they just realized somebody forgot about the trainer,” he says.
Nevertheless, he R.S.V.P.’d yes, went to the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall, and sat directly behind then Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Ginsburg’s flag-draped casket, flanked by Capitol Police officers, sat at the center. Her portrait stood behind a speaker’s lectern.
As the masked guests poured out after paying their respects, Johnson stood behind. He walked up to the casket and addressed his client quietly. “Well, Justice, I can’t let you get out of here without doing one last workout.” He got down and completed three push-ups. It was the last time he worked out with her.
Andrew Zucker works at a television-production company in New York City