“Democrats’ Line of Attack on Gorsuch: No Friend of the Little Guy”

Source: Democrats’ Line of Attack on Gorsuch: No Friend of the Little Guy – The New York Times

It may be the “line of attack,” per the Times headline, but it’s also accurate. And I’m categorizing this post as “The War on Workers.”

Some excerpts about Gorsuch and his decisions. I’ve bolded a couple of things:

For weeks, the president’s reputation has often wafted over the nomination. Days after the announcement, Mr. Trump set off on a series of attacks against the judiciary as his administration fought to preserve a since-revised executive order banning travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries.

(In meetings with Democratic senators, Judge Gorsuch called such attacks on judges “disheartening” but declined to speak publicly, even as the White House suggested Judge Gorsuch had not taken issue with anything Mr. Trump said.)

Democrats are expected to point out several instances they say highlight his tendency to side against the little guy. In one case, Judge Gorsuch argued in a dissent that a company was permitted to fire a truck driver for abandoning his cargo for his own safety in subzero temperatures.

In another, he ruled against a family seeking reimbursement under a federal disabilities law for the cost of sending a child with severe autism to a specialized school. Then there was the professor who lost her job after taking time off to recover from cancer: Judge Gorsuch denied her federal discrimination claim, saying that while the predicament was “in no way of her own making,” it was “a problem other forms of social security aim to address.”

Skeptics of Judge Gorsuch have been unmoved. On Tuesday, Democrats on Capitol Hill have planned an event focused on Judge Gorsuch’s record on campaign finance laws, suggesting that he would continue the rightward movement of the court in this area.

[I know I don’t need to remind anybody “campaign finance laws” means Citizens United–which freed huge corporate interests from any campaign finance restrictions and allowed them to put as much money into any political cause they choose. One political cause they’ve chosen to pay big bucks for is…getting Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.]

“There’s a whole pattern,” Mr. Schumer said. “He sort of expresses sympathetic words in many of these cases, but then his decision is coldly — he would say pragmatic, we would say coldly — on the side of the big interests.”

Mr. Gorsuch’s views on social issues will surely retain a conspicuous place at his hearings. One of his best-known rulings was a vote in favor of Hobby Lobby Stores Inc., which objected to regulations under the Affordable Care Act requiring employers to provide free contraception coverage.

Get to your senators, people. A Gorsuch on the Supreme Court will not be supporting our rights. He’ll support the corporate kleptocracy installed in the White House and in all the federal agencies created to protect our security and individual rights.

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