WASHINGTON -- President Donald Trump nominated Colorado federal appeals Judge Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
"Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous discipline and has earned bipartisan support," Trump declared, announcing the nomination in his first televised prime-time address from the White House.
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 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 ideology. If confirmed by the Senate, he will fill the seat left vacant last year by the death of Antonin Scalia.
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With Scalia's wife, Maureen, sitting in the audience, Trump took care to praise the late justice. Gorsuch followed, calling Scalia a "lion of the law."
Gorsuch thanked Trump for entrusting him with "a most solemn assignment."
"Standing here in a house of history, I'm acutely aware of my own imperfections and pledge that if I am confirmed, I will do all my powers permit to be a faithful servant of the Constitution of laws of this great country," he said.
For some Republicans, the prospect of filling one or more Supreme Court seats over the next four years has helped ease their concerns about Trump's experience and temperament. Three justices are in their late 70s and early 80s, and a retirement would offer Trump the opportunity to cement conservative dominance of the court for many years.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a statement, said Trump has made an "outstanding decision" in nominating Gorsuch.
"I hope members of the Senate will again show him fair consideration and respect the result of the recent election with an up-or-down vote on his nomination," McConnell said.
Both of Republican Arkansas' senators praised the pick.
"I am encouraged by how well-respected Judge Gorsuch is in legal circles and how highly experts speak of his intellect, experience and temperament, which are all important qualities for the job," Sen. John Boozman said, adding that senators should "respect the will of the voters and treat him fairly during the confirmation process."
Sen. Tom Cotton stressed the importance of the job.
"The Supreme Court, including the next justice, could determine the course of the law for decades. We need a nominee with a demonstrated record of interpreting the Constitution according to its text, structure and history," he said.
"I look forward to meeting with Judge Gorsuch soon to talk more in depth about how he sees the role of the court and his own judicial philosophy."
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Some Democrats have vowed to mount a vigorous challenge to nearly any nominee to what they view as the court's "stolen seat." President Barack Obama nominated U.S. Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland for the vacancy after Scalia's death, but Senate Republicans refused to consider the pick, saying the seat should be filled only after the November election.
"I won't be complicit in this theft," Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., wrote in an email to supporters.
Trump invited senior Democratic senators to the White House for a reception to meet his Supreme Court pick, but they declined the invitation, according to senior aides.
Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a statement Tuesday night that Gorsuch "has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women's rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the Court."
Schumer has said he is ready to block any candidate he sees as outside the mainstream, a stance that could touch off a Senate showdown in which Trump is already urging Republicans to change long-standing rules and push through his nominee on a simple majority vote.
If Democrats decide to filibuster Gorsuch's nomination, his fate could rest in the hands of Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Trump has encouraged McConnell to change the rules of the Senate and make it impossible to filibuster a Supreme Court nominee -- a change known in the Senate as the "nuclear option."
Gorsuch will need to draw the support of eight Democrats to join the 52 Republicans in the Senate to surmount a filibuster and move forward with an up-or-down confirmation vote.
If confirmed, Gorsuch would restore the 5-4 split between liberals and conservatives on the court, handing Justice Anthony Kennedy, 80, who votes with both blocs, the swing vote.
Several officials said the White House is sending a reassuring signal to Kennedy, 80, who has been considering retirement. Choosing a more ideologically extreme candidate, the officials said, could tempt Kennedy to hang on to his seat for several more years, depriving Trump of another seat to fill.
Follower of Scalia
Gorsuch has won praise from conservatives for his defense of religious freedom. In two cases that involved the contraception mandate under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, he sided with businesses, including Hobby Lobby, and nonprofit groups that voiced religious objections to the requirement that they provide cost-free birth control to women covered under their health plans.
The judge also has written opinions that question 30 years of Supreme Court rulings that allow federal agencies to interpret laws and regulations.
Gorsuch has said federal bureaucrats have been allowed to accumulate too much power at the expense of Congress and the courts.
Like Scalia, Gorsuch identifies himself as a judge who tries to decide cases by interpreting the Constitution and laws as they were understood when written. He also has raised questions about criminal laws in a way that resembles Scalia's approach to criminal law.
Gorsuch said in a speech last spring that as a judge he had tried to follow Scalia's path.
"The great project of Justice Scalia's career was to remind us of the differences between judges and legislators," Gorsuch told an audience at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland.
Legislators "may appeal to their own moral convictions and to claims about social utility to reshape the law as they think it should be in the future," Gorsuch said. But "judges should do none of these things in a democratic society."
Instead, they should use "text, structure and history" to understand what the law is, "not to decide cases based on their own moral convictions or the policy consequences they believe might serve society best."
Gorsuch, like the other eight justices on the court, has an Ivy League law degree. The Colorado native earned his bachelor's degree from Columbia University in three years, then a law degree from Harvard. He clerked for Supreme Court Justices Byron White, a fellow Coloradan, and Anthony Kennedy before earning a philosophy degree at Oxford University and working for a Washington, D.C., law firm.
He served for two years in George W. Bush's Department of Justice before the president nominated him to the appeals court. His mother was Anne Gorsuch, who was head of the Environmental Protection Agency in President Ronald Reagan administration.
Gorsuch was among the 21 possible choices for the court Trump released during the campaign.
On Tuesday, ahead of the announcement, progressive groups were already planning a rally in front of the Supreme Court, anticipating an "extreme" nominee.
"Activists will make clear that the Senate cannot confirm a nominee who will simply be a rubber stamp for President Trump's anti-constitutional efforts that betray American values," according to a statement from the organizations, which include People for the American Way, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and NARAL Pro-Choice America.
Conservative groups, too, were planning a major push to defend Trump's nominee. Within minutes of the president's announcement, organizers said, the Judicial Crisis Network was to begin the first phase in a $10 million television advertising campaign on the nominee's behalf, along with a website promoting Trump's pick. More than 50 groups were backing the effort, including gun rights and anti-abortion rights activists and the tea party.
Information for this article was contributed by Julie Pace, Mark Sherman and staff members of The Associated Press; by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman of The New York Times; by Robert Barnes of The Washington Post; and by Frank E. Lockwood of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
A Section on 02/01/2017