Gorsuch could begin playing pivotal role on Supreme Court starting next week
Newly confirmed Neil M. Gorsuch is likely to have an immediate impact at the Supreme Court, weighing in as early as next week on whether to consider expanding the breadth of the Second Amendment. He could play a decisive role this spring in determining how voting rights should be protected and in a major case on the separation of church and state.
Gorsuch was hailed by gun rights activists, antiabortion organizations and business groups, and denounced by environmentalists, feminists and unions.
They will not have to wait long to see where Gorsuch fits in.
Within the week, Gorsuch will join his new colleagues in considering whether to hear two lower-court defeats being appealed by gun rights organizations. A case about whether business owners may refuse to offer their wedding services to same-sex couples awaits resolution. Soon, the justices will take up North Carolina’s request that they overturn a decision tossing out as unconstitutional its tightened voting restrictions.
Two gun issues await at Gorsuch’s first private conference with his new colleagues Thursday, when the court meets to decide whether to accept a long list of cases for the term that begins next fall.
The most important is a petition from gun rights activists asking the court to find for the first time that the Second Amendment right to keep a gun for self-defense extends to carrying firearms outside the home.
In cases from California, the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that it did not. “Any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry – including a requirement of ‘good cause,’ however defined – is necessarily allowed by the [Second] Amendment,” it said.
The Senate voted 54 to 45 on Friday to confirm Gorsuch, ending more than a year of bitter partisan conflict over the ideological balance of the nation’s highest court. Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday, allowing him to join the court for the final months of its term, which ends in June.
A private ceremony at the court, overseen by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., will be followed by an event at the White House. There, Gorsuch’s former boss, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, will preside, marking the first time in the court’s history that a justice will serve alongside one of his former clerks,
President Trump’s pick of Gorsuch to be the nation’s 113th justice will restore a conservative-leaning, Republican-nominated majority to a court that has either deadlocked or drifted to the left since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in February 2016.