About Gorsuch

Daily Beast - Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, is Trump’s payback to the Christian Right.

He has written several books opposing euthanasia and assisted suicide, describing a sincere and consistent pro-life philosophy.  (He later stated that those were his personal beliefs, separate from his role as a judge.) He wrote a concurrence in the Tenth Circuit Hobby Lobby case that was extremely favorable to the corporation. He has been likewise supportive other cases affirming wide-ranging religious exemptions to civil rights laws.

Gorsuch has espoused a very Scalia-like “originalist” jurisprudence, writing in a tribute to Scalia that “Judges should instead strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be—not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best.”

In addition to Hobby Lobby and similar cases, Gorsuch has written a series of First Amendment opinions that would allow far more public displays of religion than are currently constitutional under Supreme Court precedent.

National Nurses United - Over the past 10 years... Gorsuch has written at least 15 labor and employment rulings, Gorsuch's opinions aligned with employers in eight of the 12 cases. Additionally, Gorsuch wrote three opinions upholding National Labor Relations Board rulings against both employers and unions.


AFP - Like Scalia, Gorsuch favors what is known as originalism -- the idea that judges should interpret the US Constitution by reverting to how it was understood at the time it was written, with no modern filters.

He backed companies who refused to provide contraception to their employees, as was called for under Obama's health care reform.

Gorsuch's trump card, as it were, is that he's never offered a seriously controversial viewpoint, especially on abortion, that could jam up his confirmation.

Popular Resistance - During the presidential election campaign, Trump listed 21 federal and state court judges as possible replacements for Scalia. In a comprehensive study led by Mercer University law professor Jeremy Kidd, Gorsuch was ranked second among the 21 in judicial qualities most resembling Scalia’s. Utah Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lee—the brother of Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah—garnered the top spot.

Independent, UK - The judge has never ruled on abortion and he is not expected to call into question high-profile rulings on the issue, same-sex marriage or interfere in a case currently before the Supreme Court on the rights of transgender students. In 2013, he upheld a lower court's ruling that a police officer could not be prosecuted after using a taser on a 22-year-old student, who died from the incident.