In a floor speech Wednesday, Leahy expressed deep frustration over the unprecedented obstruction of Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, calling the lack of action “shameful” and “corrosive for our system of government.”
Judge Neil Gorsuch
Still, as some Senate Democrats have pledged to exact revenge in the impending Supreme Court battle, Leahy took a different position, saying “the Senate owes the American people a thorough and unsparing examination of this nomination.”
After an initial review of Gorsuch’s record, Vermont’s senior senator criticized his judicial ideology. Gorsuch has been compared, both in writing style and legal substance, to the late Justice Antonin Scalia — the man Gorsuch would replace.
Like Scalia, he embraces the legal theory of originalism, which mandates that the Constitution be strictly interpreted as the founders intended more than 200 years ago.
Gorsuch has a strong record of advocating for religious exemptions from federal mandates. He objected, for instance, to the mandate set forth in the Affordable Care Act requiring companies to provide contraception to their employees. Although Gorsuch has not ruled on a case regarding the right to abortion, he has invoked language used by the anti-abortion movement.
In his book “The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia,” Gorsuch asserted that “all human beings are intrinsically valuable and the intentional taking of human life by private persons is always wrong.”
Leahy said Gorsuch’s beliefs on reproductive rights were troubling, and he pointed to Trump’s campaign rhetoric on the issue, including during an MSNBC forum where he called for a ban on abortion and said women should face “some form of punishment” if they illegally seek the procedure.
“President Trump said he would appoint justices who would overturn 40 years of jurisprudence established in Roe v. Wade,” Leahy said. “Judge Gorsuch has shown a willingness to limit women’s access to health care that suggests the president is making good on that promise.”
Leahy predicted that a number of Trump’s executive orders would be decided by the courts, pointing to a series of federal court rulings last week that temporarily blocked parts of the president’s travel ban. Leahy said the Trump order was obviously unlawful, adding that a “first-year law student could have told them they were going to lose.”
He then questioned whether Gorsuch would be an independent justice, invoking “the ideological litmus test that President Trump has applied in making this selection.”
Gorsuch serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit, a lifetime position he was confirmed to in 2006 by the Senate. During that confirmation process, Leahy said Gorsuch “appears to be a very conservative nominee.” He was later confirmed unanimously by a voice vote on the Senate floor.
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