Donald Trump has announced that 49-year-old Neil Gorsuch, who is currently on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, will be his nominee for the Supreme Court seat left open by Scalia. Antonin Gregory Scalia was an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States from 1986 until his death in 2016. Merrick Garland was on that position for nearly a year after Scalia’s death.
Gorsuch has excellent educational qualifications but his record is disturbing. His decisions from the past clearly show his stands towards abortion, religion, minorities. Gorsuch was a judge who ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby before the company’s case reached the Supreme Court, agreeing that the Christian owners had every right to impose their beliefs on their employees by denying them comprehensive health insurance that included birth control. He made a similar decision in Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Burwell, where he wrote in a dissent that if your religious beliefs come into conflict with facts and the law, your religion should take precedence.
In Pleasant Grove City v. Summum (2007), he joined Judge Michael W. McConnell's dissent from the denial of rehearing en banc, taking the view that the government's display of a donated Ten Commandments monument in a public park did not obligate the government to display other offered monuments (the one from Summum church). En banc review is often used for unusually complex cases or cases considered to be of greater importance.
Church/state separation groups are already calling this an awful choice. For instance, Nicholas Little, Vice President and General Counsel for Center For Inquiry (CFI) said: “Judge Gorsuch’s prior rulings, along with his expressed philosophy, indicate a dangerous antipathy towards the protections of the First Amendment for nonreligious Americans and those of minority religious faiths.” “The history of Judge Gorsuch’s decisions shows a disturbing preference for religion over nonreligion and for Christianity in particular over other beliefs. It is an attitude that is contrary to Supreme Court precedent and fundamental American values,” he added.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is deeply concerned about the nomination of Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. FFRF announced on their website that Judge Neil Gorsuch’s nomination poses a threat to the constitutionally enshrined principle of separation of church and state. “In short, Gorsuch is no friend to the separation of state and church,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. FFRF has about a dozen ongoing Establishment Clause lawsuits, several of which may be Supreme Court-bound.
American Atheists’ national legal director Amanda Knief urges members of the United States Senate to “fulfill their Constitutional obligation to look deeply at Judge Gorsuch’s record and determine whether or not his views about religious liberty are in line our American values.”
Photo Credits: CNN Politics
