The confirmation hearing for Neil Gorsuch, popular vote loser Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, begins on Monday and Senate Democrats are coming into the process with loads of bad history for this judge. There are five key areas likely to be in focus: contraception and Obamacare; his participation in lawless schemes of the Bush-Cheney regime; his judicial independence from Trump; a bad record on labor; and his views on the Chevron deference, a "longstanding doctrine that calls on judges to defer to how federal agencies interpret key laws."
In Hobby Lobby vs. Sebelius, Gorsuch ruled in favor of the Green family, the owners of the craft store giant that sued the Obama administration over the Affordable Care Act requirement that employers provide contraceptive coverage to its female workers. And when an order of nuns sued the administration with a similar protest in Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Burwell, he sided with the nuns even as the full 10th Circuit denied a rehearing of the case. […]
Tucked inside more than 175,000 pages of DOJ documents are several pages that show Gorsuch at the epicenter of the battle over the Bush-era detainee policies. Gorsuch … even visited the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and recommended that federal judges visit Gitmo to become “more sympathetic” to the Bush administration’s detainee policies. […]
As Trump’s attack on [Judge James] Robart engulfed the news cycle, Gorsuch privately told some senators that he found such comments “disheartening” and “demoralizing.” Gorsuch’s team tried to downplay his remarks, saying he was referring to general assaults on the judiciary. But it was widely viewed as a tactic for Gorsuch to show some independence from Trump. Whether it actually helps win over key Democratic votes is still up in the air. […]
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer held a news conference last week with people that the New York Democrat said had been victimized by Gorsuch’s legal decisions. Among his guests: the Hwang children, whose mother sued Kansas State University because she was denied an extension of her six-month leave of absence caused by her cancer diagnosis. Gorsuch sided against Hwang, who died last year. […]
Gorsuch has shown deep skepticism toward the so-called Chevron deference, a longstanding doctrine that calls on judges to defer to how federal agencies interpret key laws.
There should be enough there to sink Gorsuch, maybe not if he'd been nominated by any other Republican president. But he wasn't. He was nominated by Trump and in the next four years would be called upon to rule on any number of offenses to the constitution this president will inflict. This isn't a normal presidency, and not a normal Supreme Court nomination.