Gorsuch To Blumenthal: How Do You Like Me Now?

Blumenthal, the Senator from Planned Parenthood

If U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch were a controversialist rather than a Supreme Court Justice, he might, following a decision he wrote highly praised by the LGBTQ community in Connecticut, be writing in state newspapers – “Hey, Blumenthal, how do you like me now?

Blumenthal did not like Gorsuch then, and his carefully calibrated distaste for the “conservative” justice may still be found, in the form of an op-ed piece he had written to the Hartford Courant, still posted on his own site. The op-ed piece appeared in the Courant on March 21, 2017.

“On Monday,” it begins, “I will vote against the nomination of Judge Neil Gorsuch as United States Supreme Court justice. I made this decision after questioning him extensively at the Judiciary Committee hearing, reviewing his record, and deliberating carefully and deeply. It is one of the most important votes I will ever cast.”

And it ends with a bang: “Today, we still know very little about Judge Gorsuch’s core beliefs. But here is what we do know: We know that the man who hired him has said he passes his right-wing litmus test. We know that conservative organizations have spent millions on the prospect that he will move American law dramatically to the right. And we know that he will not answer questions that his predecessors answered about core tenets of American jurisprudence. In short, he has left us with substantial doubt.

And then Blumenthal engaged in a little Borking of Gorsuch: “That doubt leaves women wondering how long they will have autonomy over their health care decisions, same-sex couples questioning whether they might be denied the right to marry the person they love, workers and consumers doubting their rights, and Americans fearing the court will abandon protections of privacy, equality and the rule of law. That doubt is why I cannot support this nomination, and why I will work to block it using every tool at my disposal.”

On April 5, 2017, Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes From A Blue State sought to allay Blumenthal’s feverous doubt in a posting titled “Blumenthal’s Potemkin Village Objections to Gorsuch: “Those who know Mr. Gorsuch know he will not allow himself to be put on a short political chain to be jerked here and there by cheap politicians, which would prevent him from reaching decisions according to a rational interpretation of the law. That has been Mr. Gorsuch’s accomplished end ever since his appointment to the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals eleven years ago on a unanimous voice-vote by Mr. Schumer and other Democratic members of the U.S. Congress. Despite Mr. Blumenthal’s wrongheaded assumptions, Mr. Gorsuch cannot properly be described as either conservative, liberal or a progressive, terms used to describe politicians such as Mr. Blumenthal, the Senator From Planned Parenthood, who is progressive on the matter of late term abortion. Mr. Gorsuch is indeed an originalist like Mr. Scalia, whom Mr. Gorsuch will replace without disturbing a balance in the high court that dates to 1986, when Mr. Scalia was seated as an Associate Justice. Originalism, however, is not a political orientation; it is a mode of constitutional interpretation the opposite of which is anarchic Constitutional interpretation.”

As is the case with all the posts on Connecticut Commentary, this posting was also sent as a column to various Connecticut newspapers.

The LGBTQ community in the United States and Connecticut, we are advised in a June 16, 2020 front page, below the fold Hartford Courant story, “were elated at the momentous U.S. Supreme Court decision announced Monday” whose author was the same fellow wearing Blumenthal’s black halo. It seems reasonable to ask Blumenthal, following Gorsuch’s momentous decision supporting the rights of gays in their work environments, whether his doubt that Gorsuch might deny same sex couples the right to marry still assails him.

In his home state, Attorney General William Tong praised the Gorsuch written decision: “This decision means that every LGBTQ person, regardless of where they live, will be afforded that same right to be free from harassment and discrimination.” Gorsuch wrote in his decision “an employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits of actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex.”

The decision is not conservative; it is not liberal; it is not progressive. It does not seek to impose a quasi-legislative solution to a social set of circumstances. The Gorsuch decision applies settled law to employment discrimination. Former Justice Scalia, an origianalist, would have supported the Gorsuch decision. Originalism – which prevents judges from wandering beyond Constitutional prescriptions -- is a sturdy bulwark supporting the rights of the citizen against revolutionary and intemperate politicians.

It’s time for Blumenthal to open his beak and tell us whether he thinks a decision of this kind is consonant with his unfounded doubt that Gorsuch would deprive gays of a right to marry or deep-six their rights to privacy, equality and the rule of law. Shouldn’t someone put the question to him and wait around for an unambiguous non-partisan answer?