Religious-rights advocate named to U. S. high court
• President Donald Trump has tapped a Colorado conservative as his first U. S. Supreme Court nomination, setting up a showdown with congressional Democrats over a selection that would bolster the court’s conservative wing for a generation or more.
In a televised address from the White House Tuesday night, Trump announced that he had appointed federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch of Denver to the nation’s top court.
He, along with Trump’s second choice, Judge Thomas Hardiman of Pittsburgh, was summoned to the White House earlier Tuesday.
If confirmed, Gorsuch, 49, would in all likelihood restore the ideological balance that existed before Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on Feb. 13, 2016, which left the vacancy.
Gorsuch is a champion of religious liberty known for his crisp, occasionally pointed writing style. He has faulted liberals for an “overweening addiction to the courtroom” and last year hailed Scalia as a “lion of the law.”
A study led by Mercer University l aw professor Jeremy Kidd concluded that Gorsuch is the second- most similar to Scalia of the 21 prospective justices on a list Trump released during the campaign.
He serves on the 10th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, where he has made a name for himself as a graceful writer. Gorsuch is a graduate of Columbia University and Harvard Law School, and served as a law clerk to Justices Anthony Kennedy and fellow Coloradan Byron White. If confirmed, he would be the first justice to serve with a colleague for whom he once worked.
With a clear, colloquial writing style, Gorsuch has written in favour of courts’ second- guessing government regulations, in defence of religious freedom and skeptically about law enforcement. He has contended that courts give too much deference to government agencies’ interpretations of statutes.
He sided with two groups t hat mounted r el i gious objections to the Obama administration’s requirements that employers provide health insurance that includes contraception for women.
The judge is the son of president Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency chief, Anne Gorsuch. He worked for two years in George W. Bush’s Justice Department before Bush appointed him to his appeals court seat. He was confirmed by a voice vote in 2006.
Gorsuch has written 175 majority opinions and 65 concurrences or dissents in his decade on the 10th Circuit, according to Rebecca Love Kourlis, a former Colorado Supreme Court justice.
Gorsuch also is a notable advocate for simplifying the justice system to make it more accessible, Kourlis said.
The nomination comes a mid c ontroversy over Trump’s order restricting travel into the U. S. by people from seven predominantly Muslim countries. Trump fired acting Attorney- General Sally Yates on Monday night after she refused to uphold his executive order. That move angered Democrats, who vowed an all- out fight against his nomination of Jeff Sessions as attorney general and set the stage for an even bigger clash over the high court vacancy.
Democrats will be hardpressed to stop the nomination given the 52- 48 advantage Republicans hold in the Senate. Under current rules, Republicans will need 60 votes to bring the nomination to the House floor. Some Democrats say they will insist Republicans reach that threshold.
“It’s really important we have a mainstream nominee, and the way to do that is to require a super- majority vote, as we have now,” Senator Debbie Stabenow, a Michigan Democrat, said Monday before the nomination was announced.
Even so, Republicans could eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court appointments with a simple majority vote. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has vowed lawmakers will confirm Trump’s nominee.