Democratic senators explaining their votes against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch on Monday ignored his experience, qualifications, temperament, and even his judicial philosophy.

Instead, they faulted the outcome of individual cases cherry-picked from a portfolio of 2,700 and decried his decisions against sympathetic litigants and in favor of unlikable ones.

“There’s a reason why Lady Liberty holds the scales of justice and wears a blindfold.”

The outcome of Monday’s proceedings in the Senate Judiciary Committee was never in doubt. It was preordained that Gorsuch’s name would be forwarded to the full Senate on a party-line vote. But many of the appeals-court judge’s supporters said they found the Democratic line of attack disturbing.

Judges, they argue, are not supposed to consider the backgrounds and characteristics of litigants. Rulings should be based on the law, the facts, and the Constitution — without regard to other influences.

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“There’s a reason why Lady Liberty holds the scales of justice and wears a blindfold,” said John Malcolm, director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation.

Yet, here was Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.), complaining that Gorsuch could not be trusted “when the rights of hard-working Americans are at risk.” There was Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) lamenting that Gorsuch did not rule enough for the “little guy” in legal disputes before his court at the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver over the past decade.

“In case after case he favors corporations, employers, and special-interest elites, the very folks who sent his nomination to this committee,” he said.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said the effort to confirm Gorsuch “is about making sure that people win at the court who are of a certain type, like CEOs and billionaires.”

Outcomes vs. Faithfulness to the Law
Ed Whelan, president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, said the criticisms of Gorsuch demonstrate a results-oriented analysis devoid of larger legal principle or philosophy.

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“The Democrats’ arguments perfectly illustrate the utter folly of the Left’s approach to judicial decision-making,” he said.

Whelan said it also shows that Gorsuch has no vulnerability toward the Left’s “old playbook on race and gender.” He said he believes it ties to Democratic angst that President Donald Trump made inroads with “little guy voters” in the 2016 election.

“My guess is they have polling telling them that’s the way to go,” he said.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, said Democrats are making a “bizarre” argument that judges should play favorites with litigants. She said such an approach would have resulted in unfair rulings against black litigants and other disfavored minorities during parts of the nation’s history.

“We don’t want people picking favorite groups,” she said. “It’s horrifying when you think about it … that’s not something we should be embracing.”

Democrats have concentrated most of their fire against Gorsuch based on a single case, in which he dissented from a decision in favor of a truck driver who sued TransAm Trucking after the company fired him. Gorsuch wrote that he believed the law, as written, did not cover the driver because the statute prohibited a company from firing an employee for failing to operate an unsafe vehicle. But TranAm Trucking had not instructed the driver to operate the broken rig, only to stay with it, the judge wrote.

Critics point to a pair of other cases. One involved an autistic child whose parents claimed had been denied a proper eduction guaranteed by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Democrats pointed to a recent Supreme Court decision that took a more expansive view of what the law requires.

 But Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said that should not be held against Gorsuch.

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“He applied the law that existed in his circuit,” he sad. “That’s exactly what he should have done.”

The other involved Grace Hwang, a cancer survivor who lost her job as a professor at Kansas State University because she failed to return to work after a six-month hiatus.

What Democrats failed to mention is that both that the autism cases were unanimous decisions and that judges appointed by Democratic President Bill Clinton joined Gorsuch’s opinion in each case.

Democrats Make ‘Silly Argument’
Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said the contention that Gorsuch rules only against the “little guy” is not even factually accurate. At his confirmation hearing, the judge pointed to a long list of examples in which he had sided with criminal defendants, workers, discrimination victims, and others against well-heeled defendants.

“But regardless, it is of course, a silly argument,” Grassley said. “No judge doing their job considers the status of the litigants before them when deciding the cases.”

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said Democrats have no evidence to back up their charge that Gorsuch is beholden to certain litigants. He said their critique amounts to “complaints that, because they’re not directed at the way he actually analyzes the law, try to blame him for something else, try to blame him for something other than his jurisprudential approach.”

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Lee made a reference to Trump’s attack — roundly criticized by Democrats — on a “so-called” judge who ruled against his travel ban. He said the effort to defeat Gorsuch’s nomination amounts to the same kind of slur.

“You might as well call a judge with whom you disagree a ‘so-called judge,'” he said. “This is denigrating with our judicial system.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said much of the current liberal approach to the judiciary is about achieving the desired result.

“For a liberal judge who is engaged in results-oriented judging, the outcome of that choice is almost always siding with government,” he said. “It is a support of government power at the expense of individual liberty.”

But following the Constitution will more often than that go against the government, Cruz said. He added that the reason for that is simple.

“The Constitution has a bias toward liberty,” he said.