Given the deeply partisan judicial record of Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, our senators, Susan Collins and Angus King, should reject his nomination and call for a new nominee or consider Judge Merrick Garland. King should join a filibuster, and Collins should, at the very least, reject efforts to change the cloture rule requiring 60 votes to end debate on Supreme Court nominations.

A study of Gorsuch’s record, conducted by Michigan State University and University of Wisconsin political scientists, found him to be more conservative than any sitting Supreme Court justice and the late Justice Antonin Scalia.

Gorsuch has often ruled against everyday Americans. Gorsuch ruled that a company was in its rights to fire a trucker because he made a choice to avoid potentially freezing to death; he denied the right of a student with autism to get the educational support he needed; and he’s argued for a judicial philosophy that would make it harder for agencies to enforce environmental laws and other statutes.

Given this record, Senate Democrats are warranted in their plans to filibuster.

Republicans may be faced with considering the “nuclear” option to remove the 60-vote cloture rule and instead move to a simple majority vote. If this happens, the moderate thing for Collins to do would be to vote against this “nuclear” rule change.

Collins should heed the words of Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist Papers No. 78, regarding federal judges: “No man can be sure that he may not be tomorrow the victim of a spirit of injustice, by which he may be a gainer today.”

The majority party today could be the minority party in as little as four years. It is in the interest of a moderate judiciary that the public can trust to keep the rule requiring broad support for Supreme Court nominees.

Sharon McDonnell

Yarmouth


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