Washington - President Donald Trump on
Tuesday nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the US Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court
judge to restore the court's conservative majority and help
shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control,
the death penalty and religious rights.
The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious
confirmation battle in the US Senate after Republicans last
year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama's
nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of
conservative justice Antonin Scalia.
The Senate's top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, indicated his
party would mount a procedural hurdle requiring 60 votes in the
100-seat Senate rather than a simple majority to approve
Gorsuch, and expressed "very serious doubts" about the nominee.
Liberal groups called for an all-out fight to reject Gorsuch
while conservative groups and Republican senators heaped praise
on him like "outstanding," "impressive" and a "home run."
Gorsuch, the son of a former Reagan administration official,
is the youngest nominee to the nation's highest court in more
than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of
the court for decades.
He is a judge on the Denver-based 10th
US Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by
Republican President George W. Bush in 2006.
Announcing the selection to a nighttime crowd in the White
House East Room flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said
Gorsuch's resume is "as good as it gets."
Trump, who took office
on January 20 and has sparked numerous controversies, said he hopes
Republicans and Democrats can come together on this nomination
for the good of the country.
"Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant
mind, tremendous disciple, and has earned bipartisan support,"
Trump told an audience that included Scalia's widow.
"Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50
years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and
can often be permanent," Trump added.
Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for
backing religious rights and writing against euthanasia and
assisted suicide, and is seen as very much in the mold of
Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.
"I respect ... the fact that in our legal order it is for
Congress and not the courts to write new laws," Gorsuch said, as
Trump looked on. "It is the role of judges to apply, not alter,
the work of the people's representatives. A judge who likes
every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching
for results he prefers rather than those the law demands."
A senior administration official, speaking on condition of
anonymity, said the choice of Gorsuch was seen by the White
House as a significant departure from Supreme Court nominations
from the recent past, given that many justices have come from
the eastern United States.
Gorsuch lives in Boulder, Colorado,
where he raises horses and is a life-long outdoorsman.
The official said a screening committee helped in the
selection process that included Vice President Mike Pence, White
House counsel Don McGahn, chief of staff Reince Priebus and top
strategist Steve Bannon.
Gorsuch became the youngest US Supreme Court nominee since
Republican President George HW Bush in 1991 selected
conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time. Gorsuch
was in the same 1991 graduating class from Harvard Law School as
Obama.
The selection of Gorsuch, who was on a list of about 20
judges suggested by conservative legal activists, unified
Republicans in a way not seen since Trump's Nov. 8 election
victory, with even critics within the party such as South
Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham singing the nominee's praises.
Trump made his choice between two US appeals court judges,
Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the
selection process.
The Senate confirmed Gorsuch for his current judgeship in
2006 by voice vote with no one voting against him.
Democrats signaled it may not be easy this time.
"Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over
working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women's rights,
and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to
jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong,
independent justice on the court," Schumer said.
Trump got the opportunity to name Scalia's replacement only
because the Republican-led Senate, in an action with little
precedent in US history, refused to consider Obama's nominee
for the post, appeals court judge Merrick Garland.
Obama
nominated Garland on March 16 but Republican senators led by
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell denied Garland the customary
confirmation hearings and vote.
"This is the first time in American history that one party
has blockaded a nominee for almost a year in order to deliver a
seat to a president of their own party. If this tactic is
rewarded rather than resisted, it will set a dangerous new
precedent in American governance," Oregon Democratic Senator
Jeff Merkley said.
McConnell said on Tuesday he hoped the Senate would show
Gorsuch "fair consideration and respect the result of the recent
election with an up-or-down vote on his nomination, just like
the Senate treated the four first-term nominees of (Democratic)
Presidents (Bill) Clinton and Obama."
A rally outside the Supreme Court building staged by liberal
groups drew hundreds of demonstrators against Gorsuch.
Michael Keegan, president of the liberal advocacy group
People for the American Way, described Gorsuch as an
"ideological warrior who puts his own right-wing politics above
the Constitution."
Gorsuch is the son of Anne Burford, the first woman to head
the US Environmental Protection Agency.
She served in
Republican President Ronald Reagan's administration but resigned
in 1983 amid a fight with Congress over documents on the EPA's
use of a fund created to clean up toxic waste dumps nationwide.
Trump's selection was one of the most consequential
appointments of his young presidency as he moved to restore a
conservative majority on the Supreme Court that had been in
place for decades until Scalia died at age 79 on February 13, 2016.
Trump's fellow Republicans hold a 52-48 Senate majority,
meaning some Democratic votes would be needed to confirm his
pick under current rules.
Trump said last week he would favor
Senate Republicans eliminating the procedural move that
Democrats have promised, called a filibuster, for Supreme Court
nominees if Democrats block his pick. Such a change has been
dubbed the "nuclear option."
Trump has said his promise to appoint a conservative justice
was one of the reasons he won the Nov. 8 presidential election,
with Christian conservatives and others emphasizing the
importance of the pick during the campaign.
If confirmed, Gorsuch would expand the court's conservative
wing, made up of John Roberts, Anthony Kennedy Samuel Alito and
Thomas.
Kennedy long has been considered the court's pivotal
vote, sometimes siding with the liberals in key cases such as
the June 2016 ruling striking down abortion restrictions in
Texas.
The court's restored conservative majority likely would be
supportive toward the death penalty and gun rights and hostile
toward campaign finance limits.
Scalia's replacement also could
be pivotal in cases involving abortion, religious rights,
presidential powers, transgender rights, voting rights, federal
regulations others.
Gorsuch boasts Ivy League credentials: attending Columbia
University and, like several of the other justices on the court,
Harvard Law School. He also completed a doctorate in legal
philosophy at Oxford University, spent several years in private
practice and worked in George W. Bush's Justice Department.
Gorsuch joined an opinion in 2013 saying that owners of
private companies could object on religious grounds to a
provision of the Obamacare health insurance law requiring
employers to provide coverage for birth control for women.
As long as Kennedy and four liberals remain on the bench,
the court is not expected to pare back abortion rights as many
US conservatives fervently hope. The Supreme Court legalized
abortion in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling. In June, the
justices ruled 5-3 to strike down a Texas law that restricted
abortion access, with Kennedy and the liberals in the majority.
The current vacancy is the court's longest since a 391-day
void from 1969 to 1970 during Republican Richard Nixon's
presidency. After Abe Fortas resigned from the court in May
1969, the Senate voted down two nominees put forward by Nixon
before confirming Harry Blackmun, who became a justice in June
1970. Aside from that one, no other Supreme Court vacancy since
the US Civil War years of the 1860s has been as long as the
current one.
Trump may get to make additional appointments. Liberal
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who Trump called upon to resign
last July after she called him "a faker," is 83 while Kennedy is
80. Stephen Breyer, another liberal, is 78.