Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What you should know about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
What you should know about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
Apr 3, 2026 6:17 AM

Today the U.S. Senate confirmed the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuchto replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia. President Trump will swear in Judge Gorsuchearly next week.

Here is what you should know about the nextassociate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Neil Gorsuch

Age: 49

Birthplace: Denver, Colorado

Education: B.A. from Columbia University; J.D. from Harvard Law School; PhD in Law from University College at Oxford University.

Current judgeship:U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit (appointed by George W. Bush).

Previous roles: In the early 1990s, Judge Gorsuch clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He served in private practice at the Washington, D.C. law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, and served as principal deputy to the associate attorney general and acting associate attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice.

Religious denomination: Episcopalian

Family: Judge Gorsuch is married and has two daughters. His mother served as President Reagan’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Judicial philosophy: Judge Gorsuch is considered a proponent of originalism, a manner of interpreting the Constitution that begins with the text and attempts to give that text the meaning it had when it was adopted, and textualism, a method of statutory interpretation that relies on the plain text of a statute to determine its meaning.

Positions and rulings

Religious Liberty:Gorsuch was on the Tenth Circuit when they heard the religious liberty case,Hobby Lobby Stores vs. Sebelius.The court ruled federal law prohibited the requirement from applying to closely held corporations, a position upheld by the Supreme Court. In his opinion Gorsuch wrote that theReligious Freedom Restoration Act applied to the owners of Hobby Lobby: “The Act doesn’t just apply to protect popular religious beliefs: it does perhaps its most important work in protecting unpopular religious beliefs, vindicating this nation’s long-held aspiration to serve as a refuge of religious tolerance.”

The Tenth Circuit also heard the case ofLittle Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged vs. Burwell.In his dissent, Gorsuch wrote:

The opinion of the panel majority is clearly and gravely wrong—on an issue that has little to do with contraception and a great deal to do with religious liberty. When a law demands that a person do something the person considers sinful, and the penalty for refusal is a large financial penalty, then the law imposes a substantial burden on that person’s free exercise of religion. All the plaintiffs in this case sincerely believe that they will be violating God’s law if they execute the documents required by the government. And the penalty for refusal to execute the documents may be in the millions of dollars. How can it be any clearer that the law substantially burdens the plaintiffs’ free exercise of religion?

This is a dangerous approach to religious liberty. Could we really tolerate letting courts examine the reasoning behind a religious practice or belief and decide what is core and what is derivative? A Christian could be required to work on December 25 because, according to a court, his core belief is that he should not work on the anniversary of the birth of Jesus but a history of the calendar and other sources show that Jesus was actually born in March; a December 25 work requirement therefore does not substantially burden his core belief. Or a Jewish prisoner could be provided only non-kosher food because the real purpose of biblical dietary laws is health, so as long as the pork is well-cooked, etc., the prisoner’s religious beliefs are not substantially burdened. The Supreme Court has refused to examine the reasonableness of a sincere religious belief—in particular, the reasonableness of where the believer draws the line between sinful and acceptable—at least since Thomas v. Review Board of Indiana Employment Security Division, 450 U.S. 707, 715 (1981), and it emphatically reaffirmed that position in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2778 (2014).

Worker protections:While on the Tenth Circuit, Gorsuch heard the case, TransAm Trucking Inc. v. Administrative Review Board.The majority determineda trucker had been wrongfully fired after he unhitched his trailer and drove away when the truck’s brakes froze. In his dissent, Gorsuch said pany had given the driverthe legal option to stay with his trailer and wait for help, which he declined, instead operating the truck in a way not permitted by pany.

Administrative law:Gorsuch was one of the judges on the Tenth Circuitwho wrote ina 2016 opinionthat the Chevron doctrine allowed “executive bureaucracies to swallow huge amounts of core judicial and legislative power and concentrate federal power in a way that seems more than a little difficult to square with the Constitution of the framers’ design.” Gorsuch called Chevron a “Goliath of modern administrative law,” and argued it may be time to face “the behemoth.” He suggested the judiciary rather than the executive branch should have the last word on the meaning of the law. However, in his Senate confirmation hearing he responded to Sen. Klobuchar’s claim about overturning Chevron by saying, “I would try e at it with as open a mind as a man could muster.” (For more on the Chevron doctrine, see this explainer.)

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Natural rights versus American individualism
Today, mon to hear many people declaring their desires or conveniences to be rights. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All plan, or even having one’s college tuition bills footed,for example, are routinely touted as “basic human rights.” As the stipulations of what exactly defines a right seem to grow increasingly pliable in public discourse, some are left wondering; is the present confusion over the definition of a right the product of philosophies that came out of the founding era? Philosophies of...
Lessons from Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ in economics and life
When I first read Walden I was in the woods. In the Kitchel Lindquist Dunes Preserve to be precise which is also where I first read The Idiot and, amusingly, Dune. I spent a lot of time walking around alone in the woods in my childhood and adolescence so it was only natural that one day I would stumble upon the great classic of wandering around alone in the woods. When I returned from the woods the day I read...
Work as a religion: The problem with ‘workism’ and its critics
If you’re a young person in America, you’ve undoubtedly been bombarded by calls to“follow your passion,” “pursue your dreams,” or “do what you love and love what you do.” Such slogans have led many toward a renewed appreciation of the meaning that can be found in mundane economic activity—and in many ways, rightly so. But in and by themselves, do these sugary mantras truly represent the path to vocational clarity, economic abundance, personal fulfillment, and human flourishing? In an increasingly...
Fmr. Swedish prime minister warns Bernie Sanders about socialism
After video footage surfaced of Senator Bernie Sanders extolling the Soviet Union’s cultural and youth programs, the former prime minister of Sweden threw cold water on the idea that socialism builds sound societies. The tweet by Carl Bildt is the latest intervention by Nordic nations to divert the United States from adopting Marxist policies. As the 77-year-old Vermont senator announced his presidential ambitions, a string of videos emerged showing Sanders supporting Castro’s Cuba, Ortega’s Nicaragua, and the existence of breadlines....
Warren’s child care plan needs competition
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) unveiled a plan last week for universal child care. Despite her good intentions, her plan would petition, raise prices, and reduce options for parents in need. Warren begins by sharing her own experience as a working mother unable to find child care. Exasperated, she called her “Aunt Bee” and “between tears” told her, “I couldn’t make it work and had to quit my job.” Fortunately for Warren, her aunt came to the rescue...
Charlie Menditéguy: Golf and virtue
Now that I am full-time at the Acton Institute (I had been associated since the beginning, but on the governing board) I am trying to read most of its output. Not an easy task giving the numerous books, articles, academic papers and blog posts it publishes each year. Acton has an outstanding Journal of Markets and Morality, which has already reached 21 volumes. I browsed the contents of the most recent edition and saw that it devoted 40 of its...
Europe’s last Caesar
Ninety years ago Benito Mussolini, the founder of Italian fascism, stood at the pinnacle of power and prestige. In February 1929, he struck an unprecedented agreement with the Catholic Church on its role in the Italian society, the Lateran Treaty. Yet Mussolini, always remembered as bloodthirsty dictator associated with Hitler, diplomatically settled a dispute of more than 50 years between the Kingdom of Italy and Holy See that dated to the 19th century era of Italian unification. To the horror...
Scripture is not an encyclopedia of social science
Note:This article is part of the ‘Principles Project,’ a list of principles, axioms, and beliefs that undergirda Christian view of economics, liberty, and virtue. Clickhereto read the introduction and other posts in this series. The Principle:#2C —Scripture is not an encyclopedia of social science. The Explanation: There’s an old preacher’s tale of a young man who turned to the Bible for guidance on making decisions. Using the text as a divining rod he would flick through Scripture and let his...
Means of common grace
In this week’s Acton Commentary, we take a short excerpt from the latest volume in the Abraham Kuyper Collected Works in Public Theology, the second volume of the trilogy mon grace. In this section, excerpted from chapter 68, “Finding the Means,” Kuyper is exploring the question of how the fruit mon es to expression in the world. In the standard Reformed understanding, baptism munion are confessed to be the “means” of special grace. But what are the “means” mon grace?...
Acton Line: Is entrepreneurship declining? All jobs are on the A team
On this episode of Acton Line, Caroline Roberts is joined by the founder and president of the Center for American Entrepreneurship, John Dearie, to discuss the state of entrepreneurship in America. Dearie explains why start up innovation and small businesses sustain the economy and alerts us to the danger of declining entrepreneurship in America. Afterwards, occasional host and award winning news anchor, Anne Marie Schieber, speaks with several people about their work ethic, proving that sometimes satisfaction in the workplace...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved