Neil M. Gorsuch

Neil Gorsuch was nominated by President Donald Trump in January 2017 to fill the vacancy left by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The Senate confirmed him in April 2017 after Republicans eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees.

Gorsuch is widely identified as a textualist and originalist, emphasizing the ordinary public meaning of statutory and constitutional text at the time it was written. His approach is often compared to that of Justice Antonin Scalia, whose seat he filled, though Gorsuch has sometimes parted ways with conservative colleagues on particular issues.

Gorsuch authored the majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He has also written notable opinions on religious liberty and Native American treaty rights.

Before his Supreme Court appointment, Gorsuch served for over a decade as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, based in Denver. He was educated at Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and earned a doctorate in legal philosophy from Oxford University as a Marshall Scholar.