WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer says he has “serious doubts” that Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch is within what Democrats consider the legal mainstream.
Judge Neil Gorsuch speaks, after US President Donald Trump nominated him for the Supreme Court, at the White House in Washington, DC, on January 31, 2017.
President Donald Trump on nominated federal appellate judge Neil Gorsuch as his Supreme Court nominee, tilting the balance of the court back in the conservatives’ favor. / AFP / Nicholas Kamm (Photo credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images)
Schumer said in a statement Tuesday night that Gorsuch “has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women’s rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the Court.”
Schumer says the Senate “must insist” on 60 votes for any Supreme Court nominee, meaning the nominee would have to receive bipartisan support.
Schumer has not said whether he would attempt a filibuster, a procedural maneuver that would require 60 votes. But any senator can move to filibuster, and Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley has suggested he will.
