Gorsuch weighs in:
Newest justice makes conservative mark in four cases.
The Supreme Court’s newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, made his mark Monday in cases on President Trump’s travel ban, California’s gun law, lesbian parents and a religious school’s use of taxpayer funds.
To the surprise of no one — undoubtedly including Trump, who appointed him — it was a clear mark to the right.
His opinions aligned him with Justice Clarence Thomas, the court’s most conservative member, and appeared to vindicate conservative organizations’ recommendation of Gorsuch to Trump as a worthy successor to Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February 2016.
The four cases showed Gorsuch to be “an unabashed defender of constitutionalism,” said Curt Levey, president of the conservative Committee for Justice. He said Gorsuch’s opinions also provided encouraging evidence of “what the president can be counted on to do as more high court vacancies occur.”
Nan Aron, president of the liberal Alliance for Justice, said Monday’s decisions “confirm” that Gorsuch “is staking out a position on the court’s right flank.”
The 49-year-old former federal appeals court judge was seated April 10 and has taken part in a few relatively lowprofile rulings since then. On Monday, the last day of the 2016-17 term, Gorsuch weighed in on some of the court’s more prominent cases:
He joined a partial dissent by Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito, arguing that the court should have allowed Trump to enforce his entire ban on U.S. entry by residents of six nations with almost entirely Muslim populations. The other six justices allowed enforcement of a ban against entrants with no connections to people or institutions in the United States while the case is pending.
He joined a dissent by Thomas from the court’s refusal to take up a challenge to a California law requiring a local law enforcement permit to carry a concealed handgun in public. Thomas said the law degrades the constitutional right to bear arms.
Gorsuch wrote a dissent, joined by Thomas and Alito, from a ruling that requires Arkansas to list both the birth mother and her lesbian wife as parents on their child’s birth certificate. Gorsuch said the court should not prohibit Arkansas from allowing only a child’s biological parents to be named on the birth certificate, to keep track of possible genetic disorders and disputes over citizenship.
He wrote a concurring opinion, joined by Thomas, in the court’s 7-2 ruling allowing a religious school in Missouri to receive state funds to pave its playground. In what he described as a “modest” suggestion, Gorsuch said the court should have made it clearer that the ruling applies not merely to cases involving schools or children’s safety, but to any “discrimination against religious exercise — whether on the playground or anywhere else.”
Pratheepan Gulasekaram, an immigration law professor at Santa Clara University, said Gorsuch’s apparent willingness to defer to executive authority in the travel-ban case may be a sign of his positions in future immigration cases.
He cited the court’s decision Monday to order a new hearing during its next term on whether immigrants held for deportation proceedings are entitled to a bond hearing after being locked up for six months. The action indicates that the justices were deadlocked 4-4 in the case, which was heard before Gorsuch joined the court, meaning he couldn’t participate in Monday’s ruling, Gulasekaram said. But he will next time. “I don’t think that bodes well for advocates” of the detainees, Gulasekaram said.