With so many distressing things happening in the White House and Congress as an impetuous President Donald Trump and a giddy Republican Party take complete control of the country, Trump’s nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court isn’t an issue.
Trump has nominated Colorado appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch for the high court’s long-vacant ninth seat, and the Senate should give his nomination a prompt hearing and, if approved by the committee, a full vote of the Senate.
While the temptation is great for Democrats to inflict upon Republicans the same weasel tactics that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and others inflicted upon President Barack Obama’s rightful nominee for that seat last year, they shouldn’t go there. There is no doubt what Senate Republicans did regarding the Merrick Garland nomination was little more than a petty, juvenile, unfair and dangerous political sham. And what can be more satisfying for the rest of the world to watch a bully get their much-deserved comeuppance? But more acrimony and a weakened court would be the only victory for any Democratic tit for tat. The judge of Republican bad behavior must come from voters or sanctioned oversight committees.
Trump was duly elected, and his job is to fill court vacancies, and the role of the Senate is to confirm or refute those nominations. Trump has nominated Gorsuch. While we have taken great exception to some of Gorsuch’s rulings, especially those involving the rights of religious expression, Gorsuch has proven himself in all ways to be an earnest, intelligent, ethical, consistent and learned judge.
Like most “textual” judges who say they favor a literal reading of the Constitution as a basis for rulings, Gorsuch believes that when it suits his personal or established beliefs. In his ruling and comments in the controversial Hobby Lobby healthcare lawsuit, Hobby Lobby successfully sued to prevent business owners from having to comply with federal law offering potential birth-control benefits to employees. Those benefits would have come through the company health insurance. Gorsuch agreed that Hobby Lobby owners shouldn’t have to offer such health insurance policies because store owners said offering any birth control violated their religious beliefs.
Gorsuch said religious freedoms are paramount.
It was a politicized, nonsensical decision that sets up a host of problems. Here’s why: Had Hobby Lobby owners been Jehovah Witnesses, who rebuke medical treatments involving transfusions or human blood-based treatments, such as plasma, they would have been able to refuse to allow their employees to obtain those services under company-paid health insurance. That creates life-threatening problems. And if Microsoft owners all join the Church of the Divine Spreadsheet, which determines that all drugs and those who dispense them are the work of Satan, Gorsuch’s ruling would keep your health insurance from paying for any kind of medication and from visiting anyone in the healthcare industry that dispenses them. Rules are rules. We don’t see Gorsuch sticking to his religious rulings through that kind of political storm.
And none of this accounts for how the framers of the Constitution somehow wanted corporations and business to be bestowed rights as if they were humans.
Despite all that, Gorsuch’s opinions have been consistent and legally sound. He may not be preferred as a Supreme Court Justice, but he’s absolutely well-qualified.
It’s a done deal, barring something unseemly uncovered during Gorsuch’s Senate hearing, an unlikely development.
And in a perfect illustration of warning Trump and similarly aligned Republicans the sage appeal, “Careful what you wish for,” Gorsuch has proven himself to be a formidable champion of free speech, and a truly independent, almost libertarian thinker. Already Gorsuch has rebuked Trump for his juvenile attack on another group of judges for handing down an unfavorable ruling on the administration’s failed travel ban from Muslim countries.
It seems that not just daily, but numerous times each day, Trump or Congressional Republicans do or say something that makes the country, and often the entire world, flinch. There is much to monitor and push back against.
But there’s not a single logical or ethical reason to try and delay or scuttle the Gorsuch nomination.