Difference between revisions of "Neil Gorsuch"

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Neil Gorsuch
Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court From: April 10, 2017 – present
Nominator	Donald Trump
Predecessor	Antonin Scalia
Successor	Incumbent (no successor)
Former Judge of the United States Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals From: August 8, 2006 – April 9, 2017
Predecessor	David M. Ebel
Successor	Allison H. Eld
Information
Spouse(s)	Louise Burleston
Religion	Episcopalian

Neil McGill Gorsuch (born August 29, 1967, age 56) is an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court. Prior to this, he served as a federal appellate judge. He was nominated by United States President Donald Trump to the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the passing of Antonin Scalia. In his first full Term on the Court, according to Reason Magazine, Gorsuch had a more liberal voting record than even the social liberal Justice Anthony Kennedy.^[1]

Gorsuch is "pro-choice" and told Senator Susan Collins that he would not overturn Roe v. Wade simply because there was a 5-4 majority to do so, as reported by Politico:^[2]

When [Gorsuch] met with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) earlier [in February], she pressed him on his views on judicial precedent: If five current justices disagree with a previous Supreme Court decision, is that sufficient grounds to overturn the ruling? Gorsuch said no.

“It’s important to me generally, but it also is important to me because of Roe v. Wade,” Collins, who supports abortion rights, said of asking Gorsuch about precedent. “It’s an important principle.”

David Souter and Anthony Kennedy used the same excuse to perpetuate Roe v. Wade in 1992 in Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Gorsuch is active in an ultra-liberal Episcopalian church whose woman pastor marched against Trump in Washington, D.C. in January. More generally, the Episcopal Church is officially on record as being strongly against pro-life laws, though TEC's official statement says that abortion "should be used only in extreme situations.”

After Scalia unexpected passed away, Gorsuch began positioning himself for the vacancy by aligning himself with originalism. He supposedly opposes judicial activism as an underhanded method to bring about social change,^[3] but sided with inventing new rights for transgenders under a federal law passed years ago.

Life

Neil Gorsuch was born in Colorado on August 29, 1967, to two lawyers.^[4] He spent increasing time in Washington, D.C. as his mother Anne became the first woman to run the EPA.^[5] He went to Columbia University, where he wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator and co-founded The Federalist Paper, and later attended Harvard Law School.^[6]

The "Frozen Trucker" Case

See also: Frozen Trucker case

Judge Gorsuch rendered several opinions after the vacancy arose on the U.S. Supreme Court, perhaps as a way of enhancing his own candidacy. Often for the first time, Gorsuch used language in these opinions to position himself closer to Justice Scalia's philosophy. One of these opinions, a dissent by Gorsuch, occurred in the so-called "frozen trucker" case, TransAm Trucking, Inc. v. Admin. Review Bd., United States DOL, 833 F.3d 1206 (10th Cir. 2016).^[7]

This so-called "frozen trucker" case emerged during Gorsuch's confirmation hearings as an example of his favoring powerful corporations over the "little guy." A trucker whose rig had broken down was stuck in freezing weather and told to remain with his rig until help arrived. After waiting in vain for more than two and a half hours, he unhooked his trailer and drove it to safety, and was fired for disobeying orders.

Gorsuch dissented passionately from a panel decision that upheld an administrative ruling reinstating the employment of the trucker.^[8]

Supreme Court nomination and confirmation

President Trump announcing his nomination of Gorsuch, January 31, 2017.

President Trump looks on as Gorsuch is sworn-in.

On January 31, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.^[9][10] The nomination was well received by many conservatives.^[11][12] Others, however, most notably Andrew Schlafly, disagreed with the nomination due to concerns about Gorsuch's position on abortion.^[13][14] The Senate ultimately confirmed Gorsuch on a vote of 54–45, even though the GOP was forced to initiate the nuclear option and remove the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees due to Democrat obstructionism.^[15]

Tenure on the Court

After assuming office, Gorsuch was frequently described as generally positioning himself along with conservative justices,^[16] though Reason Magazine's analysis found that in his first full term, he positioned himself as slightly more liberal than even Justice Kennedy, the swing vote.^[1] On June 26, 2017, Gorsuch joined a dissenting opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas opposing the Supreme Court's decision to reject hearing two cases in which gun rights groups appealed and which meant that anti-gun and -Second Amendment laws would prevail.^[17][18] The Court assigned Gorsuch to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals.^[19]

On subsequent Second Amendment petitions for cert, however, Gorsuch sided with the liberal wing of the Court in denying cert and thereby allowing anti-Second Amendment appellate rulings to stand. For example, on Feb. 20, 2018, Gorsuch refused to join a dissent by Justice Thomas which sought to invalidate a 10-day waiting period gun control law in California:^[20]

On April 17, 2018, Gorusch joined the liberal wing of the Supreme Court by casting the deciding vote against deportation of an illegal alien who broke the law, and thereby invalidated a key part of immigration law.

On the Fourth Amendment, Gorsuch alone espouses a view that it should be reinterpreted based on property ownership, rather than privacy expectations. Litigants in Fourth Amendment cases, including the one decided by the Supreme Court in June 2018, do not typically assert such an argument.

On June 15, 2020, Gorsuch joined the liberal wing of the Supreme Court in voting (along with John Roberts) to write transgenderism and "sexual identity" into the twelfth title of the 1964 Civil Rights Act^[21] in Bostock v. Clayton County.

References

See also

• Truck Drivers Weigh In On TransAm Trucking Case, Neil Gorsuch Nomination
• The Real Story About Neil Gorsuch and the TransAm 'Frozen Trucker'
• When Neil Gorsuch put corporate interests over a man freezing to death