Washington, D.C. — Today, just a day after Senate Republicans went nuclear to lower the vote threshold for Supreme Court nominees, the Senate confirmed Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Court by a slim 54-45. Nearly every other modern justice has cleared the 60-vote threshold with bipartisan support. Michele Jawando, Vice President for Legal Progress at the Center for American Progress, issued the following statement in response:
Forty-five senators voted against the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch today for one main reason: His extreme opinions are out of the mainstream and do not reflect those of most Americans, and he will advance a conservative activist agenda on the Supreme Court for decades into the future. His confirmation to the Court threatens women’s rights and the dignity of LGBT people and puts the rights of corporations over individuals.
Gorsuch’s opinions are out of the mainstream. In labor and employment cases, Gorsuch ruled in favor of employers two-thirds of the time. In TransAm Trucking, he dissented in favor of an employer that fired a trucker for temporarily abandoning a malfunctioning trailer to save himself from freezing to death. In Riddle v. Hickenlooper, Gorsuch argued that campaign contributions are a form of speech that deserves the highest form of constitutional protection. And in Planned Parenthood v. Herbert, Gorsuch pushed the entire 10th Circuit to review a decision to stop the Utah governor from defunding Planned Parenthood.
The senators who voted for Gorsuch will now be responsible when he invariably votes to change the U.S. Constitution and laws to undermine the fundamental dignity of LGBTQ people, to subvert the legal rights of workers, to further open the floodgates for money in the political system, and to limit women’s right to choose. And the Center for American Progress plans to hold those senators accountable.
Center for American Progress experts are available to speak on this topic. To coordinate, please contact Tanya Arditi at [email protected] or 202.741.6258.
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