Bitter partisanship marks start of Senate hearings for President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court pick Neil Gorsuch,
Trump’s choice pressed on rulings that favored corporations
WASHINGTON — A smiling, confident Judge Neil Gorsuch cruised through the first of four days of his Supreme Court hearings Monday by striking a tone of humility and idealism. But a partisan confirmation battle may yet await.
Democrats voiced skepticism about his conservative record and pro-business rulings and repeatedly brought up Republicans’ refusal last year to even consider President Barack Obama’s nominee for the same seat now being filled by President Donald Trump.
Gorsuch, 49, pledged to senators that he would be a restrained, fair and nonpartisan justice of the nation’s highest court.
“These days we sometimes hear judges cynically described as politicians in robes,” he said in his opening statement. “But I just don’t think that’s what a life in the law is about.”
Gorsuch’s statement capped a day in which Democrats raised concerns about what they see as an increasingly conservative and activist Supreme Court that has struck down laws on campaign spending and voting rights and shielded corporations from suits from injured people.
The high court “is polarized along party lines in a fashion that we have never seen,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I. He cited a series of 5-4 rulings in which the court’s five Republican appointees “helped Republicans at the polls, helped Republicans gerrymander ... and helped corporate money flood the elections.”
Democrats expressed doubts about whether Gorsuch, a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, could be an independent voice, standing up to Trump or big corporations when necessary.
“Will you elevate the rights of corporations over those of real people?” asked Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt. “And will you rubber-stamp a president whose administration has asserted that executive power is not subject to judicial review?”
Referring to the Trump administration’s clashes already with courts over his proposed travel ban, Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., quipped, “You’re going to have your hands full with this president. He’s going to keep you busy.”
Republican senators praised Gorsuch as exactly the kind of judge who should be elevated to the Supreme Court.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said Gorsuch has shown he believes in “judicial independence” and in checking “executive overreach.”
He chided Democrats for suddenly showing an interest in such principles now that a Republican is in the White House.
The competing House Intelligence Committee hearing Monday about the FBI probe into whether some on the Trump campaign coordinated with Russians in meddling in the U.S. election did not go unnoticed in the Senate hearing.
“The possibility of the Supreme Court needing to enforce a subpoena against the president is no longer idle speculation,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, DConn. “So the independence of the judiciary is more important than ever.”
The stark difference in tone and substance sets the stage for the senators on Tuesday to begin questioning Gorsuch, Trump’s choice to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Durbin said he would press Gorsuch to explain several of his decisions that sided with corporations and against employees. They included the Hobby Lobby case, in which Gorsuch voted to shield the Christian owners of the craft store chain from paying for some contraceptives mandated under Obamacare. “I was struck by the extraordinary, even painful lengths the court went to protecting the religious beliefs of the corporation and its wealthy owners, and how little attention was paid to the employees.”
He and other Democrats are also likely to focus on the case of Alphonse Maddin, a truck driver from Detroit who was fired after he left his broken trailer’s cargo on a freezing night. Gorsuch dissented from a decision that found the firing was improper.
“It was at least 14 below,” Durbin said, “but not as cold your dissent.”
California Sen. Dianne Feinstein worried that Gorsuch would vote to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling that legalized abortion. She said this decision “ensured that women and their doctors will decide what’s best for their care, not politicians.”
Most Democratic senators also noted in their opening statements that the GOP-led Senate last year refused to hold hearings on Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. That unprecedented move has led some to predict Democrats will mount a campaign to block Gorsuch.