Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch

Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch joined the United States Supreme Court in 2017. Nominated by President Donald Trump, Justice Gorsuch is known for his textualist and originalist approaches to statutory interpretation and the U.S. Constitution.

Education & Clerkships

Justice Gorsuch graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Columbia University in 1988. During his undergraduate studies, Justice Gorsuch was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa, wrote for the Columbia Daily Spectator, the student newspaper, and co-founded the university's satirical paper, The Columbia Federalist.

After graduating from Columbia, Justice Gorsuch received a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School in 1991. He served as an editor of the Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy and graduated cum laude. After graduating from Harvard, he clerked for Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for one year.

Justice Gorsuch was a Marshall Scholar and studied at the University of Oxford from 1992 until 1993. He then served as a clerk for two Supreme Court justices, Justice Byron White and Justice Anthony Kennedy, until 1994.

Justice Gorsuch returned to academia to receive a Ph.D. in legal philosophy from Oxford. He graduated in 2004 after completing research on topics such as assisted suicide and euthanasia.

Law Practice

From 1995 to 2005, Justice Gorsuch worked at the law firm of Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel as an associate and later partner. He focused on commercial matters and litigated cases involving antitrust laws, contracts, and securities fraud.

In 2005, Justice Gorsuch went on to serve as the Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General, Robert McCallum, at the United States Department of Justice. He assisted with civil litigation in the areas of antitrust, environmental, and civil rights.

Judicial Offices

In 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Justice Gorsuch to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. The Tenth Circuit hears appeals from the federal district courts of the states of Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wyoming.

Justice Gorsuch was confirmed by a unanimous vote of the U.S. Senate in July 2006. He served in this position until 2017 and authored over 200 published opinions. During his tenure on the Tenth Circuit, Justice Gorsuch's most notable opinions included Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch (2016) and Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius (2013).

Former President Donald Trump nominated Justice Gorsuch to the U.S. Senate on February 1, 2017, to fill the seat left vacant by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Justice Gorsuch was confirmed by the Senate on April 7, 2017, with a 54–45 vote. He was sworn in as the 101st Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court on April 10, 2017.

Notable Decisions

Justice Gorsuch authored his first opinion as an associate justice in Henson v. Santander Consumer USA, Inc. (2017), which involved debt collection under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. One of his most significant majority opinions is Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination based on sex also covered sexual orientation and gender identity. Other notable opinions by Justice Gorsuch include Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda (2020), Ysleto del Sur Pueblo v. Texas (2022), and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022).