Liberal Nightmares Come True As Gorsuch Begins To Cast SCOTUS Votes

Two Supreme Court actions today have served to pretty much confirm what liberals had feared and conservatives were terrified to hope which is that newly appointed Supreme Court Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch is a conservative in the tradition of Antonin Scalia. In a concurrence to the Trinity Lutheran case, he says the court did not go far enough in protecting religious freedom from government interference. Keep in mind this is a case that caused the half wit wise Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, to read her dissent from the bench with duct tape wrapped around her head. In the second case, Gorsuch would have lifted all the lower court injunctions against President Trump’s ban on travel to the US by people from one of six failed states or state sponsors of terror.

Every indication that Gorsuch will be among the most conservative, if not THE most conservative Justice on SCOTUS, as many of us said.

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) June 26, 2017

Just remember this for NEXT confirmation, when supporters of someone with Gorsuch profile claim he’s a blank slate, open to anything

— Rick Hasen (@rickhasen) June 26, 2017

Rick Hasen is a well-known left-leaning lawyer who writes at ElectionLawBlog. This is what he has to say:

There was a lot of dissembling when Justice Gorsuch was nominated to the Supreme Court, that he was some kind of blank slate, without preconceived ideas about how he would rule as a Supreme Court Justice. Of course, this was a ruse to blunt public criticism. Many of us knew that he would be a very conservative Justice—the only question is if he will be more like Scalia, Thomas, or Alito.

J. Gorsuch has been on the Court only a few months, and only heard one month’s worth of oral arguments. But today, on the last day of the Supreme Court’s term, we got a very good indication he will be most like Justice Scalia, and often voting with Justices Thomas and Alito, making Justice Gorsuch one of the most, or most, conservative Justices. We also got indications (from the fact that he wrote four separate opinions related to orders today, and joined a fifth–by Justice Thomas) that he will not be shy about getting the Court involved in the most sensitive issues, from gun rights to gay rights. He will not be like Chief Justice Roberts in considering institutional legitimacy and comity.

..

Finally, and what makes me think Justice Gorsuch will be more like Scalia than Alito or Thomas is Justice Gorsuch’s pro-criminal defendant statement in the Hicks case, over Chief Justice Roberts’ dissent. Justice Scalia, while very conservative, had a pocket of pro-criminal defendant cases. I expect Gorsuch to have the same.

But on most of the issues that get the greatest public attention—abortion, gay rights, voting rights, gun rights, federal power–I expect Justice Gorsuch to be on the far right of the Court. And given his age, he’s likely to be there for a generation or more.

I think Hasen is right. Gorsuch is doing conservative things and not worrying about being the junior member of the court. In Trinity Lutheran, he authored a concurrence that was joined by Thomas. He’s not pulling punches with either his questions from the bench or with his opinions. No matter what else Trump does or fails to do, this alone makes his election worth it.

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