For the fraction of liberal voters who complained during the campaign that there wasn’t a lick of difference between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Supreme Court pick – named on Tuesday night – should clear up the confusion.
In the new president’s reality show announcement on Tuesday, Trump revealed Neil Gorsuch, a U.S. Circuit Judge on the 10th Circuit Court Of Appeals, was his pick to fill the vacant seat on the court.
Gorsuch wasn’t only the most conservative of Trump’s two remaining frontrunners; he’s also to the right of Justice Samuel Alito and late Justice Antonin Scalia – two right-wing extremists.
The chart below shows where Gorsuch stands on the political spectrum compared to current and previous justices:
Trump’s nominee will almost certainly move the Supreme Court to the right. Question is, “by how much?”https://t.co/Fk8hnZncxR pic.twitter.com/yOHGL3PdAx
— Ben Casselman (@bencasselman) January 30, 2017
For the majority of the country who believes Roe v. Wade should be upheld, marriage equality should be preserved, and Citizens United should be overturned, Trump’s extremist pick to fill the vacant seat on the Supreme Court is unacceptable.
Two instances, in particular, show that Gorsuch would be especially bad for women’s rights.
In 2013, he sided with the Supreme Court’s decision in the landmark Hobby Lobby case, which ruled that for-profit companies can deny employees access to contraceptives on religious grounds – even if the employee doesn’t subscribe to their faith. According to Slate, Gorsuch said “these corporations … must not be required to comply with the contraceptive mandate if doing so makes them ‘complicit’ in evil.”
Just last year, Gorsuch sided with Utah Gov. Gary Herbert’s efforts to defund Planned Parenthood in the state. Millions of women (and men) rely on the important organization to get health care services they wouldn’t otherwise receive.
Unlike President Obama’s middle-of-the-road pick of Merrick Garland, Gorsuch is a right-wing religious extremist that will likely set the court back decades and do nothing to quell the voices of millions of women worried that the new president is coming for their rights. If anything, Trump’s pick only validates their concerns.
Democrats should use all the power at their disposal to block Gorsuch’s confirmation.