Justice Neil Gorsuch
Supreme Court of the United States
Neil McGill Gorsuch was born in August 1967 in Denver, Colorado. He earned an undergraduate degree in political science from Columbia University and received his Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School. He was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy in Law from the University of Oxford, where he completed research on assisted suicide and euthanasia. He was a judicial clerk at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Supreme Court Justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy. He entered the private practice of law.
Gorsuch served briefly as Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General at the U.S. Department of Justice. He managed the Department’s Civil Division. President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote in the Senate and assumed his position in July 2006.
After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, President Donald Trump announced the nomination of Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court. Hearings on his confirmation were tension-filled, and he was forwarded to the floor of the Senate a party-line vote of the Judiciary Committee. His nomination was debated on the floor of the Senate, and, in early April, he was confirmed. He received his commission on April 8, 2017.
Gorsuch is married to Marie Louise, a British citizen he met at Oxford. They have two daughters. While raised Catholic, he is now a Protestant.
In the News…
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a Georgia family can sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation for being raided in the middle of the night in 2017. FBI agents broke down the door of their Atlanta home and handcuffed the man before discovering they had the wrong address. While the lead agent apologized to the family later, they received no assistance or support from the FBI for the damage and disturbance. They filed suit against the agency, but the Eleventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals dismissed it as an “honest mistake” due to faulty GPS and cited qualified immunity.
Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the decision that remands the case back to the appellate court, with direction to apply the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which would waive federal government immunity for compensation claims.
The high court instructed the lower court to consider “whether, under Georgia state law, a ‘private individual under like circumstances’ would be liable for the acts and omissions the plaintiffs allege.”
Justice Gorsuch wrote, “Because the FTCA’s liability rule incorporates state law, in most cases” – including this one – “there is no conflict for the” Constitution’s supremacy clause – which provides that the Constitution and federal laws are the “supreme Law of the Land” – “to resolve.”
Contact this Leader…
Did you pray for Justice Gorsuch today? You can let him know at:
The Honorable Justice Neil Gorsuch
Supreme Court of the United States
1 First Street NE
Washington, DC 20543
