Neil Gorsuch Is Paying Off For Trump So Far

Things looked very different when the justices wrapped up their work this week.

Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch looks on as Senate Judiciary chairman Sen. The decision to push up the reunion by a year helped spark talk he might be leaving the court.

“Liberals were certainly looking forward to a Clinton presidency that would alter the direction of the court”.

“His record so far on the court is hardly surprising to us”, said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice.

Gorsuch dissented from the court’s denial of review in Mathis v. Shulkin, in which the justices had been asked to review a rule created by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit to use in cases involving disabled veterans who are seeking compensation for disabilities that they suffered while they were serving in the armed forces. But he’s also consistently voted with progressives, helping to save whatever is left of affirmative action and the constitutional right to choose.

Wydra speculated that a Supreme Court replacement chosen by the Trump administration will probably move judgments in favor of more conservative political agendas.

But Kennedy turns 81 next month and has been on the court for almost 30 years.

The 80-year-old justice has been the subject of scattered speculation in recent months about whether he would step down now.

At this early juncture of his tenure, Justice Neil Gorsuch has placed his bold, conservative bona fides in plain view, evincing an important shift in the center of gravity among the Court’s five conservatives. Just consider the president’s tweets about judicial rulings in the case that has now reached your own court. Hopefully, part of his retirement plans include writing a book or two sharing the stories of what he’s seen unfold in the fifty-nine years he covered the nation’s highest Court.

Yet on the last day of the term, the Court agreed to hear the case.

While they were shorthanded, the justices took up fewer cases that were likely to divide them ideologically.

“Replacing Justice Kennedy with a Trump nominee would nearly certainly sound the death knell for [1973 abortion rights case ” Roe v. Wade], just as candidate Trump promised during the 2016 campaign”, said Wydra. In the religion case, which said Missouri unconstitutionally excluded a church from a program to fund playground surfaces, Gorsuch said Chief Justice John Roberts shouldn’t have expressly limited the ruling to that type of program. They will be reargued before a full court in their next term.

The travel ban dispute weighs the president’s considerable powers over immigration and the targeting of Muslims that lower courts have found.

READ: Can Police Track Your Phone Without Warrant?

Another upcoming case that is of interest to Justice Kennedy deals with gerrymandering and the role of politics in redrawing district lines.

“Next year already looks like a return to the new normal”, Shanmugam said.

Kennedy, the one Californian on the high court, sided with the majority in each case. Garland’s ascension to the court might have reduced Kennedy’s sway.

In another report at the top of 8 a.m. ET hour, Williams fretted that Kennedy’s retirement “would allow President Trump to make the Court solidly conservative for decades”.

Another consideration is that if Kennedy were to delay his retirement for a year, his replacement would face confirmation during the mid-term election year, something that could further inject politics into an already controversial process.