Judge Neil Gorsuch is Trump's nominee for Supreme Court

Washington, Feb 1
President Donald Trump picked Judge Neil Gorsuch, a Court of Appeals judge from Denver, for the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court seat has been left vacant for almost a year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.

Supporters said he was a good choice professionally and politically.

"I feel very good about his chances," Senator Cory Gardner said. "People felt so confident in him and his qualifications that they didn't even require a recorded vote."

Gorsuch, 49, believes in a literal reading of the Constitution, and his relatively young age means he could remain on the bench for decades.

A study has also concluded that Gorsuch is the second-most similar to Scalia of the 21 prospective Supreme Court nominees Trump released during the campaign.

Democrat's response

Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump's newly-revealed Supreme Court nominee, has a legal history that shows a deep sympathy for corporate interests and an apparent disdain for workers.

As an attorney, Judge Gorsuch routinely represented big businesses in class action lawsuits. As a judge on the Tenth Circuit, he wrote a concurring opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius -- the case that allowed employers to deny basic health care coverage to women by ruling the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive mandate was unconstitutional. He upheld a decision that denied long-term insurance benefits to a worker who sustained a work-related injury that required spinal surgery. He even dissented from a ruling in favor of a truck driver whose employer illegally fired him for abandoning a trailer with locked brakes -- so he wouldn't freeze to death.

And as a member of the ultra-conservative "Federalist Society," Gorsuch believes in severely restricting the power that federal agencies like the EPA have to regulate businesses.

It's not hard to see why Trump loves him so much -- but from where we're sitting, Judge Gorsuch has no business on the Supreme Court bench.