President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch on Tuesday to fill the United States Supreme Court seat left vacant by the late Justice Antonin Scalia.
Gorsuch, a favorite among evangelicals, served on Denver’s 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, where two landmark religious liberty cases—Little Sisters of the Poor v. Burwell and Hobby Lobby v. Burwell—were heard. Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns, and the evangelical owners of Hobby Lobby, a chain of craft stores, both hold sincere religious beliefs that life begins at conception and were being forced to provide abortifacients through their employee healthcare plans as a part of the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare.
Gorsuch wrote in favor of both organizations, citing the importance of freedom of conscience. “All of us face the problem of complicity,” he said, regarding the Hobby Lobby case. He went on to explain that anyone with “sincerely held religious beliefs” should not be coerced into “conduct their religion teaches them to be gravely wrong.”
He also wrote a book, The Future of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia, opposing the two acts out of a personal conviction that each human life has value.
Franklin Graham applauds President Trump’s nomination.
“He said he was going to appoint a conservative, and that’s exactly what he has done in selecting Judge Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court,” Graham wrote on his Facebook page.
“From all that I have read and from his track record, Judge Gorsuch is an excellent choice whose decisions will be guided by the original intentions of the U.S. Constitution and who will not try to legislate from the bench.”
To be confirmed, Gorsuch will go before the Senate and will need a two-thirds majority vote.
