Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What you should know about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
What you should know about Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch
Feb 21, 2026 6:08 PM

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
Why Liberty Requires Christianity
Joseph Pearce offers a controversial (and irrefutable) argument that faith is a prerequisite to true freedom: In an age that seems to believe that Christianity is an obstacle to liberty it will prove provocative to insist, contrary to such belief, that Christian faith is essential to liberty’s very existence. Yet, as counter-intuitive as it may seem to disciples of the progressivist zeitgeist, it must be insisted that faith enshrines freedom. Without the shrine that faith erects to freedom, the liberties...
Video: Amway’s Doug DeVos on ‘Free Enterprise and the Entrepreneurial Spirit’
At an Acton Institute event on Oct. 3 in Grand Rapids, Mich., Amway President Doug DeVos delivered a talk on ‘Free Enterprise and the Entrepreneurial Spirit’ to an audience of 200 people. He was introduced by the Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president and co-founder of the Acton Institute. See the Grand Rapids Press/MLive coverage of the event in “Read Doug DeVos’ take on Amway, the presidential race and Dwight Howard leaving the Orlando Magic” by reporter Shandra Martinez. DeVos’ Amway...
Video: Do You Have Free Will?
At the online Prager University, lecturer Frank Pastore asks: “Do you have the ability to shape your own destiny? Is there a difference between your mind and your brain? Or is free will just a convenient delusion? Are you really just a product of physical forces beyond your control?” Listen live online to The Frank Pastore Show — The Intersection of Faith and Reason here. In Southern California, tune into to KKLA 99.5. ...
Access Denied: Property Rights for Women Not a Given
A few days ago, a documentary entitled: Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a portion of which is devoted to depicting the situation of violence against women in Sierra Leone, aired on Public Broadcasting Station (PBS). Not portrayed in the documentary, but also a factor that puts women in the country at a disadvantage is little or no right to private property. An INRN article states, “…the vast majority of women in Sierra Leone live under...
Foreign aid: ‘It’s not actually going to the people’
Speaking at a conference at Bethel College, Acton’s Director of Media, Michael Miller, told the audience that while good intentions are necessary in the fight against poverty, they simply aren’t enough. Miller spoke directly on the topic of foreign aid to developing nations: Western countries providing financial aid to developing nations seems to make sense, but there is no correlation between the extent of aid and economic progress in those countries, Miller said. Much of the aid goes to foreign...
Economics is Intuitive
Economist Bryan Caplan sets out to prove thatbasic economics is intuitive: To make my prima facie case, I’m going to present a few allegedly counterintuitive economic propositions, then explain them at a 6th-grade level. 1. Counterintuitive claim: Free trade makes countries richer, even if the other countries have big advantages like cheaper labor or more advanced technology. Intuitive version: We’d be better off if other countries gave us stuff for free. Isn’t “really cheap”the next-best thing? 2. Counterintuitive claim: Strict...
Double Blessings on the World
When my kids go to the pediatrician it is a mad house while we are waiting for the doctor e in. All three of my kids are doing the random dance. The oldest is behind the bench inspecting the lamp, the youngest is hopping from one book to another spread out on the floor and the boy is using the bean bag chair as a fort. When the es in, they all start talking to her at once as if...
West MI CEO files lawsuit, cannot comply with Obamacare
West Michigan businessman, John Kennedy, has joined over 90 plaintiffs in filing suit against the federal government in its attempts to force business owners and employers to pay for procedures and medications that violate religious beliefs. Kennedy joins other business owners, such as Hobby Lobby CEO David Green who says “God owns” his business. Kennedy, president and CEO of Autocam and Autocam Medical, says the law clearly violates his religious beliefs. “This law requires me to violate my beliefs by...
David Brooks, Economic Liberty, and the Real Threat to Social Preservation
David Brooks recently took on the conservative movement for relying too heavily on pro-market arguments and tired formulas rather than emphasizing its historic features of custom, social harmony, and moral preservation. As I’ve already noted in response to the Brooks piece, I agree that conservatism needsa renewed intellectual foundation brought about by a return to these emphases, yet I disagree that a lopsided devotion to “economic freedom” is what’s stalling us. If we hope to restore traditionalist conservatism, we’d do...
Freedom (and Prudence) in the Pulpit
Over 1,000 pastors across the U.S. agreed to participate in yesterday’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The event, part of a strategic litigation plan sponsored by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), is an annual attempt to provoke the IRS into revoking the non-profit status of churches. Pastors signed apledge agreeing to “evaluate candidate(s) running for political office during a regular worship service in light of biblical Truth and church doctrine.” While the IRS has reportedly issued threats to pastors who use the pulpit...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved