Where Trump's Potential Court Picks Stand on Religious Liberty and Abortion
President Donald Trump will name his pick to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia next week. He made the announcement in a tweet Wednesday.
I will be making my Supreme Court pick on Thursday of next week.Thank you!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017
In May, Trump released the names of 11 possible people he would choose from, but Politico reports he has narrowed his choices down to three.
The president interviewed the following conservative judges in New York during the transition period: Neil Gorsuch of Colorado, William Pryor of Alabama and Thomas Hardiman of Pennsylvania.
"The president wants to move as quickly as he can," said Leonard Leo, an advisor to Trump and a top official at the Federalist Society.
Judge Gorsuch, 49, serves on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver and is best known for upholding religious liberty rights in the cases that have come before him.
He is also known for his decisions concerning regulations under Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act.
The Catholic charity Little Sisters of the Poor and the Christian company Hobby Lobby both sued the Obama administration over the contraception mandate which forced employers to provide contraception coverage for employees.
Both cases ended up in the 10th Circuit and Gorsuch voiced support for the claimants.
"All of us face the problem of complicity," he wrote in the Hobby Lobby case. "And government should not force people with 'sincerely held religious beliefs' to be complicit in 'conduct their religion teaches them to be gravely wrong.'"
The Supreme Court reached the same decision by a 5-4 vote in 2014.
According to CNN, Gorsuch has never had an occasion to write an opinion addressing Roe v. Wade.
Another possible Supreme Court pick for Trump is 54-year-old Judge William Pryor of Alabama. He once called Roe v. Wade, the "worst abomination in the history of constitutional law," according to the website Above the Law.
Life News reports Pyror also told a Senate panel, "I believe that not only is (Roe) unsupported by the text and structure of the Constitution, but it has led to a morally wrong result. It has led to the slaughter of millions of innocent unborn children."
CNN also reports that Pryor believes the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original public meaning.
"I am a conservative, and I believe in the strict separation of governmental powers," Pryor wrote in 1997 when he was attorney general of Alabama. "Courts should not resolve political problems."
But some conservatives question an opinion he joined that they perceive as expanding transgender rights.
Judge Thomas Hardiman, 51, of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals is also said to be on Trump's list.
Hardiman became the first person in his family to go to college when he went to the University of Notre Dame, and he financed his law degree at the Georgetown University Law Center by driving a taxi.
He serves on the same appeals court as the president's sister, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry.
According the SCOTUSblog, Hardiman has not weighed in directly on issues relating to abortion.
But in the case United States v. Marcavage he joined an opinion vacating the conviction of an anti-abortion protester who was arrested for refusing to move away from the sidewalk in front of the Liberty Bell Center.
He has also written opinions supporting a student's ability to express religious beliefs in public schools.
He dissented from the panel's ruling in favor of a school district and against an evangelical Christian mother and her son who were not allowed to read from the Bible during a kindergarten "show and tell" activity.
Hardiman suggested that "the school went too far" in the case.
And Heavy News reports that when Hardiman was a lawyer in 2000, he defended the Allegheny County, Pennsylvania court house's Ten Commandments plaque.
