WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump nominated to the Supreme Court Neil Gorsuch, a federal judge known to favor protections of religious belief in the public square and for business owners.
The nomination, likely to trigger a vigorous confirmation battle, is splitting the organized Jewish community, with the Reform movement expressing concerns and an OU official describing his record as “encouraging.”
Trump introduced Gorsuch on Tuesday evening, Jan. 31, at a White House event.
“Judge Gorsuch has a superb intellect, an unparalleled legal education and a commitment to interpreting the Constitution according to its text,” Trump said.
Cast your vote: ‘Will Gorsuch be confirmed?‘
Gorsuch said, “It is for Congress, not the courts, to write new laws. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is likely a very bad judge.”
He told Trump, “You’ve trusted me with the most solemn assignment. I am acutely aware of my own imperfections.”
Gorsuch, 49, is on the US Court of Appeals in Denver covering six Western states. He would replace one of the high court’s most stalwart conservatives, Antonin Scalia, who died last year.
Gorsuch is the son of the late Anne Gorsuch, who served as the sometimes controversial head of the Environmental Protection Agency during the Reagan administration.
Among Gorsuch’s opinions most attracting Jewish interest was Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby in 2013, when the appeals court upheld the right of a private business to reject the government mandate to provide contraceptive care under employee health plans.
The Obama administration had offered leeway on such coverage to faith-based nonprofits but would not extend them to private businesses.
Gorsuch joined the majority in the appeals court ruling, which was upheld the next year by the US Supreme Court.
Liberal Jewish groups backed the government in the case. Orthodox Jewish groups favored Hobby Lobby, arguing for expansive allowances for consideration of religious beliefs by business owners.
Gorsuch has also favored displays of crosses on public lands, and has tended in his rulings toward the rights of gun owners and in favor of the death penalty. The Denver Post reported that his record on abortion rights is sparse.
“We are greatly troubled by Judge Gorsuch’s record, which suggests that he may not have the attributes and values a nominee to the Supreme Court ought to have in order to mete out justice and interpret the laws that affect us all,” said a statement issued on behalf of a number of the Reform movement’s umbrella bodies.
“We look forward to engaging in the confirmation process to further evaluate Judge Gorsuch’s views on issues of core importance to the Reform Movement, including civil rights, separation of church and state, religious freedom, women’s rights, LGBTQ equality and many more.”
Bend the Arc, a liberal social action group, said it was “deeply concerned” by Gorsuch’s record.
Nathan Diament, the OU’s executive director of public policy, meantime, said Gorsuch’s rulings “show a jurisprudential approach that venerates religious conscience and pluralism in American society.”
Asked to describe his judicial philosophy at his 2006 confirmation hearing to the court of appeals, Gorsuch said:
“I resist pigeonholes. They aren’t terribly helpful. People do unexpected things. Pigeonholes ignore gray areas in the law.”
The nomination is likely to face a fight, with Democrats suggesting they may filibuster. Democrats are still stung by the refusal of Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., to allow a hearing for President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Scalia, Merrick Garland, a moderate judge.
“For nearly a year, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans shamefully failed to respect that President Obama was the duly elected president and had the authority and responsibility to put forward a nominee for the US Supreme Court — and the Senate had the obligation to provide advice and consent for that nominee, Merrick Garland,” Sen. Ben Cardin, D-Md., said in a statement.
“This reckless course of action by the Republican leadership has inflicted lasting damage on the Supreme Court and the independence of the federal judiciary while diminishing the powers and duties of the Senate.”
A bitter 30-year history of partisan tit-for-tat accusations on Supreme Court nominations goes back to the Democrat vote not to confirm President Reagan’s nominee, Robert Bork, in 1987 and the confirmation of President George H. W. Bush’s nominee, Clarence Thomas, in 1991.
Merrick Garland, had he been confirmed, would have brought to four the number of Jewish justices on the Supreme Court.
The Denver Post reported that Gorsuch graduated from Harvard Law School and the University of Oxford, and that he clerked for two Supreme Court justices, Byron “Whizzer” White, Colorado’s last justice on the Supreme Court; and Anthony Kennedy.
Gorsuch was also in private practice and was principal deputy to the associate Attorney General of the US before joining the US Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.
The Boulder Camera reported that Gorsuch, who lives in northeast Denver with his wife Louise and two daughters, keeps horses, chickens and goats on a three-acre lot, and that Gorsuch spends his free time fly-fishing, hiking and rowing at Boulder Reservoir.
The IJN added to this story.
