Judge & fury
Dems fume as GOP gets Gorsuch through
WASHINGTON — Grinning Republicans stole a lifetime Supreme Court appointment on Friday, putting President Trump’s nominee on the court after a debate that may have done permanent damage to both the court and the Senate.
The Senate voted to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court by a 54-45 vote, placing Trump’s pick on the court after Republicans refused to give former President BarackObama’s nominee for the seat a chance of being confirmed — and killing a longstanding rule requiring a supermajority for Supreme Court justices on Thursday.
“This is an important day in the history of the Senate and the Supreme Court,” said Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who led the charge to refuse to give Obama’s nominee a hearing and change the rules to ram through Trump’s pick. “If I look back on my career, I think the most consequential decision I’ve ever been involved in was the decision to let the President being elected last year pick the Supreme Court nominee.”
The vote, which occurred mostly along party lines, puts a well-respected but unbendingly conservative judge on the court for what could be decades. Gorsuch is only 49, and has a legal reputation that many scholars believe may make him even more conservative than the man he’s replacing, former Justice Antonin Scalia, the court’s most hardline right-winger in recent years.
Democrats are livid, arguing that McConnell stole the seat and did permanent damage to the Senate, while undercutting the court’s impartiality, by eliminating the filibuster.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned that the manner in which Gorsuch was confirmed makes both the Senate and Supreme Court “more partisan.”
Trump celebrated the confirmation with a tweet: “Congratulations to an exceptionally qualified and respected judge on his confirmation to the Supreme Court!”
Gorsuch will be sworn in on Monday.
He’s expected to join a conservative-leaning voting bloc of justices, making five on the nine-member court. As soon as April 13, he could take part in his first private conference, where justices decide whether to hear cases. Some of those cases involve gun rights, voting rights and a Colorado baker’s refusal to design a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding.
On April 17, the court will begin hearing oral arguments on a church-state separation case its members already accepted, Church of Columbia vs. Pauley, in which a Missouri church has argued that the state violated the Constitution by denying it public funds for a playground, due to a state ban on aid to religious groups.