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Here Are the Democrats Who Voted for Neil Gorsuch as a Circuit Court Judge in 2006

February 1, 2017

Some Senate Democrats, including Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) and Jeff Merkley (Ore.), have already signaled their plans to obstruct and vote against Judge Neil Gorsuch's confirmation to the Supreme Court. But some Democrats appear to have forgotten the votes of colleagues in their own party to confirm Gorsuch to the U.S. 10th Circuit Court of Appeals back in 2006.

At the time, Gorsuch had been nominated by former President George W. Bush to serve on the 10th Circuit Court and was approved by a voice vote in the Senate–which included 45 Democrats.

Current Democratic senators who voted for his confirmation at the time include Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), and ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (Vt.).

Schumer questioned whether Gorsuch would be able to serve as an impartial judge on the Supreme Court in a statement he released Tuesday night:

The burden is on Judge Neil Gorsuch to prove himself to be within the legal mainstream and, in this new era, willing to vigorously defend the Constitution from abuses of the executive branch and protect the constitutionally enshrined rights of all Americans.

Given his record, I have very serious doubts about Judge Gorsuch's ability to meet this standard. Judge 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.

Many other notable former Senate Democrats voted to confirm Gorsuch back in 2006. Former Massachusetts Sen. and Secretary of State John Kerry was listed as voting in favor of Gorsuch, as was Hillary Clinton and former Vice President and Sen. Joe Biden.

Gorsuch's Harvard Law School classmate and eventual president, Barrack Obama, also voted to support Gorsuch's nomination to the 10th Circuit Court.

President Donald Trump's nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on Tuesday night has received praise from elected Republicans, with many describing him as a judge in the model of the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.