Gorsuch for SCOTUS: Today's news for February 1st

Associated Press:

Conservative Judge Gorsuch is Trump's Supreme Court choice

President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch, a fast-rising conservative judge with a writer's flair, to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, setting up a fierce fight with Democrats over a jurist who could shape America's legal landscape for decades to come.

At 49, Gorsuch is the youngest Supreme Court nominee in a quarter-century. He's known on the Denver-based 10th Circuit Court of Appeals for clear, colloquial writing, advocacy for court review of government regulations, defense of religious freedom and skepticism toward law enforcement.

...Gorsuch's nomination was cheered by conservatives wary of Trump's own fluid ideology. If confirmed by the Senate, he will fill the seat left vacant by the death last year of Antonin Scalia, long the right's most powerful voice on the high court.

What can we expect from Gorsuch?

CNN:

Hobby Lobby and executive power: Gorsuch's key rulings

The article linked above shows a judge who very much defers to original interpretations of the Constitution in his rulings. His most famous ruling was in Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius:

One of the most striking and potentially controversial features of Gorsuch's jurisprudence is his overarching commitment to religious freedom as both a constitutional and statutory right -- even in contexts in which the Supreme Court had previously been less sympathetic to such claims.

In 2013, he joined in an opinion by the full Court of Appeals holding that federal law prohibited the Department of Health and Human Services from requiring closely-held, for-profit secular corporations to provide contraceptive coverage as part of their employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

And although a narrowly divided 5-4 Supreme Court would endorse that view (and affirm the 10th Circuit) the following year, Gorsuch wrote that he would have gone even further, and allowed not just the corporations, but the individual owners, to challenge the mandate.

As he opened his concurrence, "All of us face the problem of complicity. All of us must answer for ourselves whether and to what degree we are willing to be involved in the wrongdoing of others. For some, religion provides an essential source of guidance both about what constitutes wrongful conduct and the degree to which those who assist others in committing wrongful conduct themselves bear moral culpability."

Those religious beliefs, he concluded, justified allowing the individuals, and not just the corporations, to challenge the government's rules for employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

From a libertarian perspective, his dissent in United States v. Carlos is most reassuring:

One of the areas in which Justice Scalia's jurisprudence was, or at least appeared to be, the least partisan was with regard to the Fourth Amendment -- a context in which Scalia would often provide the more progressive justices with a fifth vote to invalidate a search or seizure that he deemed unconstitutional.

As a result, the Fourth Amendment is likely to be one of the contexts in which Gorsuch may well be the swing vote between two four-justice blocks. And if his dissenting opinion in this case is any guide, he may well continue Scalia's more libertarian tradition on searches and seizures. At issue was whether police officers were allowed to enter the area around the defendant's home (the "curtilage") before knocking on his door (usually, the answer is yes) if, as in that case, the defendant had prominently posted no-trespassing signs all over his property.

Although the majority held that the answer was yes, Gorsuch dissented. According to him, a property owner had the right to revoke the "implied license" of allowing potential visitors at least up to his front door, there was no precedent justifying the government's effort to "upend the original meaning of the Fourth Amendment or centuries of common law recognizing that homeowners may revoke by word or deed the licenses they themselves extend."

In that regard, he expanded upon the Supreme Court's own guidance in a 2013 opinion written for a 5-4 Court by... you guessed it... Antonin Scalia.

Overall, Gorsuch looks like an excellent choice at first glance. It should be interesting to see how he gets Borked. Rest assured, he will be.