64 Facts About Neil Gorsuch

Neil McGill Gorsuch is an American lawyer and jurist who serves as an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Neil Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump on January 31,2017, and has served since April 10,2017.

Neil Gorsuch received his legal education at Harvard Law School and, after 15 years as a practicing attorney, obtained a Doctor of Philosophy in jurisprudence from the University of Oxford on a Marshall Scholarship.

Neil Gorsuch was the Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice from 2005 until his appointment to the Tenth Circuit.

Neil Gorsuch is a proponent of textualism in statutory interpretation and originalism in interpreting the United States Constitution.

Neil Gorsuch is the first Supreme Court justice to serve alongside a justice for whom he once clerked.

Neil Gorsuch was the eldest of three children, and is a fourth-generation Coloradan.

Neil Gorsuch enrolled in Georgetown Preparatory School, a selective Jesuit college-preparatory school, arriving as a freshman in 1981.

Neil Gorsuch was two years junior to future justice Brett Kavanaugh, a classmate he later clerked with at the Supreme Court.

Neil Gorsuch was a member of Georgetown Prep's debate, forensics, and international relations clubs, and served as a United States Senate page in the early 1980s.

Neil Gorsuch graduated in 1985 as student body president; in contrast to Kavanaugh, he was described as a fairly outgoing and extroverted student.

Neil Gorsuch undertook a heavier courseload to graduate in three years.

Neil Gorsuch distinguished himself as an active debater and an ardent conservative, publishing pieces that criticized left-wing politics.

Neil Gorsuch was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.

Neil Gorsuch was described as a committed conservative who supported the Gulf War and congressional term limits on "a campus full of ardent liberals".

Neil Gorsuch was an associate in the Washington, DC, law firm from 1995 to 1997 and a partner from 1998 to 2005.

At Kellogg Huber, Neil Gorsuch focused on commercial matters, including contracts, antitrust, RICO, and securities fraud.

In 2002, Neil Gorsuch wrote an op-ed criticizing the Senate for delaying the nominations of Merrick Garland and John Roberts to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, writing, "the most impressive judicial nominees are grossly mistreated" by the Senate.

In 2004, Neil Gorsuch received a Doctor of Philosophy in legal philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he completed research on assisted suicide and euthanasia as a postgraduate student at University College.

Neil Gorsuch's thesis was supervised by Canadian legal scholar Timothy Endicott of Balliol College, Oxford.

In 1996, Neil Gorsuch married Louise, an Englishwoman and champion equestrienne on Oxford's riding team whom he met during his stay there.

In 2005, at Kellogg Huber, Neil Gorsuch wrote a brief denouncing class action lawsuits by attorneys on behalf of shareholders.

Neil Gorsuch served as Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General, Robert McCallum, at the United States Department of Justice from June 2005 until July 2006.

Neil Gorsuch helped Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepare for hearings after the public revelation of NSA warrantless surveillance, and worked with Senator Lindsey Graham in drafting the provisions in the Detainee Treatment Act that attempted to strip federal courts of jurisdiction over the detainees.

On July 20,2006, Neil Gorsuch was confirmed by unanimous voice vote in the US Senate.

Neil Gorsuch was Bush's fifth appointment to the Tenth Circuit.

When Neil Gorsuch began his tenure at Denver's Byron White United States Courthouse, Justice Kennedy administered the oath of office.

In Hobby Lobby Stores v Sebelius, Gorsuch wrote a concurrence when the en banc circuit found the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate on a private business violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In Gutierrez-Brizuela v Lynch, Gorsuch wrote for a unanimous panel finding that court review was required before an executive agency could reject the circuit court's interpretation of an immigration law.

Neil Gorsuch has been an opponent of the dormant Commerce Clause, which allows state laws to be declared unconstitutional if they too greatly burden interstate commerce.

In 2011, Neil Gorsuch joined a unanimous panel finding that the dormant Commerce Clause did not prevent the Oklahoma Water Resources Board from blocking water exports to Texas.

In 2013, Neil Gorsuch joined a unanimous panel finding that federal courts could not hear a challenge to Colorado's internet sales tax.

In 2016, the Tenth Circuit panel rejected the challenger's dormant commerce clause claim, with Neil Gorsuch writing a concurrence.

In Energy and Environmental Legal Institute v Joshua Epel, Gorsuch held that Colorado's mandates for renewable energy did not violate the commerce clause by putting out-of-state coal companies at a disadvantage.

Neil Gorsuch wrote that the Colorado renewable energy law "isn't a price-control statute, it doesn't link prices paid in Colorado with those paid out of state, and it does not discriminate against out-of-staters".

In Riddle v Hickenlooper, Gorsuch joined a unanimous panel of the Tenth Circuit in finding that it was unconstitutional for a Colorado law to set the limit on donations for write-in candidates at half the amount for major party candidates.

Neil Gorsuch added a concurrence noting that although the standard of review of campaign finance in the United States is unclear, the Colorado law would fail even under intermediate scrutiny.

In Planned Parenthood v Herbert, Gorsuch wrote for the four dissenting judges when the Tenth Circuit denied a full rehearing of a divided panel opinion that had ordered the Utah governor to resume the organization's funding, which Herbert had blocked in response to a video controversy.

Neil Gorsuch wrote a four-page dissent, arguing that the New Mexico Court of Appeals had "long ago alerted law enforcement" that the statute that the officer relied upon for the child's arrest does not criminalize noises or diversions that merely disturb order in a classroom.

In 2009, Neil Gorsuch wrote for a unanimous panel finding that a court may still order criminals to pay restitution even after it missed a statutory deadline.

In 2013, Neil Gorsuch joined a unanimous panel finding that intent does not need to be proven under a bank fraud statute.

Neil Gorsuch was 49 years old at the time of the nomination, making him the youngest nominee to the Supreme Court since the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas, who was 43.

Neil Gorsuch's confirmation hearing before the Senate started on March 20,2017.

Neil Gorsuch was sworn into office on Monday, April 10,2017, in two ceremonies.

Neil Gorsuch wrote a dissent, joined by Thomas and Alito, arguing that the Court should have fully heard the arguments of the case.

In October 2020, Neil Gorsuch agreed with the justices in an "apparently unanimous" decision to deny an appeal from Kim Davis, a county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Neil Gorsuch joined Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor in the opinion, and wrote a separate concurrence reiterating the importance of the vagueness doctrine within Scalia's 2015 opinion in Johnson.

In December 2018, Neil Gorsuch dissented when the Court voted against hearing cases brought by the states of Louisiana and Kansas to deny Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.

In February 2019, Neil Gorsuch sided with three of the Court's other conservative justices, rejecting a stay to temporarily block a law restricting abortion in Louisiana.

In June 2022, Gorsuch was among the five justices who formed the majority opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women's Health Organization, which ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, overruling Roe v Wade and Planned Parenthood v Casey.

Neil Gorsuch joined Roberts, Kavanaugh, and the four Democratic appointees in the majority in both cases while Thomas and Alito dissented.

Neil Gorsuch is a proponent of originalism, the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as perceived at the time of enactment, and of textualism, the idea that statutes should be interpreted literally, without considering the legislative history and underlying purpose of the law.

Neil Gorsuch wrote that, in doing so, American liberals are circumventing the democratic process on issues like gay marriage, school vouchers, and assisted suicide, and this has led to a compromised judiciary, which is no longer independent.

Neil Gorsuch wrote that American liberals' "overweening addiction" to using the courts for social debate is "bad for the nation and bad for the judiciary".

Neil Gorsuch has been considered to follow in Scalia's footsteps as a textualist in statutory interpretation of the plain meaning of the law.

Neil Gorsuch has been active in several professional associations throughout his legal career, including the American Bar Association, the American Trial Lawyers Association, Phi Beta Kappa, the Republican National Lawyers Association, and the New York, Colorado, and District of Columbia Bar Associations.

In May 2019 it was announced that Neil Gorsuch would become the new chairman of the board of the National Constitution Center, succeeding former vice president Joe Biden.

Neil Gorsuch enjoys the outdoors and fly fishing, on at least one occasion going fly fishing with Scalia.

Neil Gorsuch raises horses, chickens, and goats, and often arranges ski trips with colleagues and friends.

Neil Gorsuch is a co-author of The Law of Judicial Precedent, published by Thomson West in 2016.

In 2017, after his announcement as a Supreme Court nominee, the New York Times reported that Neil Gorsuch owned a timeshare outside Granby, Colorado, with associates of Philip Anschutz, that was later sold the same year.

The property was listed for sale for a few years but did not go under contract until the week after Neil Gorsuch joined the Supreme Court.

Neil Gorsuch was the first member of a mainline Protestant denomination to sit on the Supreme Court since the retirement of John Paul Stevens in 2010.

Neil Gorsuch's wife, Louise, is British-born; the two met while Neil was studying at Oxford.