5 Questions the American People Need Donald Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee to Answer
JJudge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. And it’s the Committee’s responsibility to use these confirmation hearings to ask him serious questions — and get answers.
The burden is on Judge Gorsuch to demonstrate that he is qualified to serve on our nation’s highest court.
The moment Donald Trump nominated Judge Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court on January 31st, Lambda Legal’s Fair Courts Project released a comprehensive review of his entire judicial record.
Here’s the bottom line: We found that Judge Gorsuch’s views on civil rights issues are antithetical to our mission and to the rights of all marginalized people living in the United States. His anti-LGBT record drove our decision to oppose his nomination from that first moment, before confirmation hearings, a first for our organization.
Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life. Everyone living in the United States has a right to know how the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch would impact our Constitution rights to equality, liberty, dignity, and justice under law.
Judge Gorsuch needs to answer to the American people. And here is what we need to know.
Do you recognize that discrimination against transgender people is sex discrimination?
Judge Gorsuch joined a 2015 opinion rejecting arguments made by a transgender woman who was incarcerated that the Oklahoma Department of Corrections had violated her constitutional rights by denying her medically necessary hormone treatment and her request to wear feminine clothing.
In several cases, Lambda Legal is fighting for the right of transgender students to use school restrooms that match who they are. There are several cases already in consideration among lower federal courts — one of those cases could end up at the Supreme Court.
How will you balance religious freedom and the civil rights LGBT people, including the freedom to marry?
Judge Gorsuch has supported religious exemptions from laws based on “complicity” — the idea that adhering to the law makes a religious objector complicit in the allegedly sinful conduct of others.
He troublingly described the issue in his 10th Circuit Hobby Lobby opinion as follows: “All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others.”
It’s this kind of judicial philosophy that will lead to an erosion of our hard won rights.
Do you believe that the courts are the appropriate place to protect individual civil rights or does he believe that minority rights should be put to a vote?
Judge Gorsuch has expressed disapproval of civil rights impact litigation, writing in 2005 that “American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom … as the primary means of effecting their social agenda on everything from gay marriage” to other issues.
Lambda Legal’s mission is to achieve full recognition of the civil rights of LGBT people and everyone living with HIV. And we will continue to challenge all barriers in our path to equality in courts.
Do you believe that the Constitution requires the protection of the civil rights of LGBT people and everyone living with HIV?
Judge Gorsuch is commonly described as an originalist and a textualist: someone who claims to interpret legal provisions as their words were originally understood.
In his 2016 tribute to the late Justice Scalia, Judge Gorsuch wrote: “Judges should [] strive (if humanly and so imperfectly) to apply the law as it is, focusing backward, not forward, and looking to text, structure, and history to decide what a reasonable reader at the time of the events in question would have understood the law to be ….”
The Supreme Court’s four-decade evolution on LGBT rights has been entwined with our nation’s growing recognition of the shared humanity and dignity of LGBT people.
Do you believe that the concerns of religious parties override the freedom of all people to make personal and intimate choices without interference?
Judge Gorsuch has allowed concerns of religious parties to override the freedom of all people to make personal and intimate choices without interference.
Even the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby weighed the business owners’ religious liberty claim against Congress’s interest in protecting women’s health, and acknowledged how limiting access to contraception can inflict harms on female employees and dependents. Troublingly, Judge Gorsuch’s opinion does not even see this as a problem.
As LGBT people know all too well, when government interferes with individual autonomy in decisions about family life, intimacy, and procreation, government stigmatizes people and deprives them of equal dignity.
Help us get these questions answered at Judge Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings this week.
During this week’s confirmation hearings, Senators on the Judiciary Committee will have the chance to question Judge Gorsuch. Click through to easily tweet at them and ensure they ask him these extremely important questions.
LGBT people deserve equal rights and dignity in the eyes of the law. Does Judge Gorsuch agree?
Transgender rights are protected by federal law. Does Judge Gorsuch agree?
Courts are crucial for protecting equal rights of LGBT people. Does Judge Gorsuch agree?
The Supreme Court must respect the constitutional rights of LGBT people. Does Judge Gorsuch agree?
It is imperative that the Senate Judiciary Committee asks Judge Gorsuch these questions this week. The nation is watching, and we need answers.
