Gorsuch could lead court in new conservative era

Long- lasting change may come with Trump’s next pick

WASHINGTON If confirmed by the Senate, Neil Gorsuch won’t just restore the conservative tilt that the Supreme Court had before Antonin Scalia’s death a year ago. He could help it endure for decades to come.

Thirty years Scalia’s junior, Gorsuch, 49, would lend a more contemporary, plain- folks brand of judicial conservatism to a court whose right flank is getting old and a bit out of style. Justice Anthony Kennedy, with whom Gorsuch clerked, is 80. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are in their 60s.

In Gorsuch, President Trump plucked an intellectual leader of the next generation of conservative lawyers. And by touting Thomas Hardiman of Pittsburgh, until the last second, Trump may have hinted at his next high court nomination.

For all the hoopla in the White House’s East Room Tuesday night when Gorsuch’s nomination was announced, the attention was shared by a missing person: Scalia, whose death Feb. 13 led Republicans to block President Obama from filling the seat and to search for a Scalia clone. Enter Gorsuch. “There’s just an awful lot of Scalia- ness in Gorsuch’s views and Gorsuch’s opinions,” says John Malcolm, director of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. “He thinks very, very deeply about the fundamental tenets of our democracy. Those are not quaint, fuzzy concepts to him.”

For Gorsuch to go from his Denver- based federal appeals court back to Washington — where he moved as a high school student when his mother, Anne Gorsuch Burford, was named to head the Environmental Protection Agency in 1981 — it will take the support of at least eight Senate Democrats or a Republican-engineered change in the rules.

The math is simple: Republicans have to unite their 52 members, which seems likely. Democrats have to decide whether to do likewise in opposition or allow some of their 48 members to vote their conscience. About 10 face tough elections next year in states that Trump won.

Conservative groups immediately began spending part of their $ 10 million bankroll on ads in some of those key states. Liberal groups went to the Supreme Court steps to vow opposition.

It seems likely that Trump will get a conservative nominee confirmed; if not Gorsuch, someone else. Despite their anger at the way Obama’s nominee, Judge Merrick Garland, was treated last year, it seems impossible to foresee four years of gridlock.

That’s good news for the court. It’s been limping along with eight justices for 50 weeks, and by the time the Senate votes — most likely in April, at the earliest — it will have been shorthanded for a full term and half of another. In one case last month, recusals by two justices left only six of them to hear oral arguments in an important immigrant rights case.

Gorsuch’s confirmation, whether with Democratic support or a change in the Senate rules to eviscerate the minority party’s power to block him, would accomplish three things for conservatives:

uIf he gets to the court by April, he could tip the balance in cases involving religious liberty and transgender rights.

uHis presence could spell doom for some of Obama’s forays into areas such as health care, immigration and environmental protection.

uAnd in the years to come, Gorsuch could be joined by other Trump nominees to form a more permanent conservative majority.

To replace any of those justices Trump will need more than just Tuesday’s element of surprise and a willingness to consult with Democrats as well as Republicans. His next nomination, unlike this one, will be the political equivalent of World War III in Washington.

But Gorsuch could be there until 2050 or beyond, providing enduring consequences.

ALEX WONG, GETTY IMAGES Neil Gorsuch, with his wife, Louise, could, at 49, represent a generational change at the Supreme Court.