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Associate Justice of the Supreme Court
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Neil McGill Gorsuch is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, nominated by President Donald Trump in 2017. His appointment was highly controversial, as he filled the vacancy left by the death of Antonin Scalia—a seat the Republican Senate majority refused to allow President Barack Obama to fill (Merrick Garland) for nearly a year. A staunch textualist and originalist from the West, Gorsuch replaced Scalia as the Court’s premier literary conservative. Gorsuch is defined by his profound libertarian streak. He holds a deep skepticism of the federal administrative state and was the primary judicial architect behind the dismantling of *Chevron* deference. However, his strict textualism has occasionally led him to break with his conservative colleagues and side with the liberal wing, most famously in *Bostock v. Clayton County* (expanding LGBTQ+ workplace protections) and in nearly every case involving Native American tribal sovereignty (*McGirt v. Oklahoma*), making him the most fiercely independent of Trump's appointees.
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Authored the landmark 2020 decision in *Bostock v. Clayton County*, ruling that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects employees against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity
Authored *McGirt v. Oklahoma* (2020), a monumental ruling affirming that a vast portion of eastern Oklahoma remains Native American tribal land for the purposes of criminal jurisdiction
His confirmation was viewed by Democrats as the result of a 'stolen seat,' permanently poisoning his entry onto the Court and triggering the abolition of the legislative filibuster for Supreme Court nominees
His authorship of the *Bostock* decision enraged religious conservatives and the MAGA base, who accused him of abandoning originalism to legislate from the bench
Faced minor ethics scrutiny in 2023 regarding a real estate transaction in Colorado with the CEO of a major law firm that frequently argued before the Court, though it was legally disclosed
Successfully championed the crusade to overturn *Chevron* deference, dealing a crippling blow to the regulatory power of federal agencies like the EPA and SEC
