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| Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, left, and Vice President Pence, right, meet with Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. |
DENVER — It was a horrific case. A female student had been gang-raped by football players being recruited by the University of Colorado. Now, her lawyers were trying to hold the university partly responsible, arguing it had created a hostile environment for women.
A lower court had already rejected their civil rights argument. As her lawyers prepared to appeal in 2007, they had an overarching concern: a federal appellate judge named Neil Gorsuch.
Newly appointed to the bench by then-President George W. Bush, Gorsuch was known as a fierce conservative whose writings skewered his liberal adversaries. His fellow conservative judges had shown little appetite in previous cases to hold institutions, such as universities, responsible for the conduct of individuals.
“It was crushing news to learn Gorsuch was on the panel,” said Baine Kerr, a lead attorney for the rape victim in the case 10 years ago.
Kerr spent weeks preparing for Gorsuch, staging extensive mock hearings to simulate the aggressive interrogation they expected from him.
But on the day of the hearing when Kerr stepped up to the lectern, anticipating Gorsuch to cut him off immediately with questions, the judge stayed silent instead, listening intently. Fifteen minutes into Kerr’s argument, a red light went off signaling that Kerr’s time was up. Gorsuch waved Kerr on.
Over the next hour, Gorsuch steered the conversation with pointed comments — sympathetic for Kerr, barbed for the university’s lawyer.
Lawyers on both sides recalled later that they were dumbfounded.
The appeals court would go on to decide in favor of the victim, sending the case back to a lower court for trial. And the lawsuit was ultimately settled with the university paying her $2.5 million.
In the weeks since President Trump nominated Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, debate over him has split along predictably partisan lines, with praise from the right and anxious condemnation from the left.
But Gorsuch himself is perhaps not so predictable. An examination of his development from gifted Colorado schoolboy to college firebrand and then staunchly conservative jurist reveals that he is quite capable of surprise.
“People do unexpected things. Pigeonholes ignore gray areas in the law.”
Neil Gorsuch, in his 2006 confirmation hearing for the 10th Circuit. Gorsuch’s past as a gifted Colorado schoolboy, a college firebrand and a staunchly conservative jurist reveals a potential Supreme Court justice who is capable of surprise.
He grew up in a high-profile Republican family and became infamous in Columbia University’s liberal circles for penning fierce attacks on campus protesters. On the bench, he has subscribed to the same judicial philosophy as the late Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon whom Gorsuch would replace on the court. And Gorsuch’s recent rulings — including a major decision finding that companies could deny employees government-mandated contraceptive coverage on religious grounds — have won him plaudits from the right.
But Gorsuch has also established deep and enduring relationships with liberals he has known since his school days — in some cases the very targets of his pointed attacks. He has won endorsements from gay friends and hired law clerks from the opposite end of the political spectrum. He has argued that the court system shortchanges low-income people and called for making legal services cheaper and courts more accessible. Even the simple writing style of his opinions, which have won wide attention in legal circles, reflects his conviction that the law should be understandable to everyone, lest it favor only the wealthy and well educated.
In his writings, he has denounced liberals for using court decisions to advance “their social agenda.”
But Gorsuch has also refused to be pigeonholed himself, saying, “People do unexpected things. Pigeonholes ignore gray areas in the law.”
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