Key Facts
Career & Education
About
Neil McGill Gorsuch, born on August 29, 1967, in Denver, Colorado, is an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017 and serving since then. He is recognized for his originalist and textualist judicial philosophy and conservative jurisprudence, often aligned with Justice Antonin Scalia, and is known for decisions favoring religious freedoms and deregulation. The eldest of three children to Anne Gorsuch Burford, the first female Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency under President Ronald Reagan, and David Ronald Gorsuch, a lawyer, Neil grew up in a politically influential family. His early education included attending Georgetown Preparatory School in Maryland after his family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1981. Gorsuch excelled academically, graduating Phi Beta Kappa from Columbia University in 1988 with a B.A., where he wrote conservative articles and co-founded publications. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1991 and a D.Phil. in philosophy (jurisprudence) from Oxford University in 2004 as a Marshall Scholar, with his thesis on the morality of assisted suicide supervised by John Finnis.
Gorsuch's legal career began with prestigious clerkships for Judge David B. Sentelle on the D.C. Circuit, Justice Byron White, and Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. From 1995 to 2005, he practiced at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel, becoming a partner in 1998 and representing corporate clients, including Anschutz and his companies, in high-stakes litigation. In 2005, he joined the Department of Justice as Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division under President George W. Bush. Nominated by Bush in 2006, Gorsuch served as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit until his elevation to the Supreme Court. He has authored key opinions on religious liberty, administrative law, and criminal procedure.
Personally, Gorsuch is married to Amanda Gorsuch (née Tiffany), whom he met at Oxford, and they have three daughters: Emma, Belinda, and Charlotte. The family resides in Maryland. Gorsuch is an Episcopalian and enjoys outdoor activities like skiing and fly-fishing. His tenure on the Court has been marked by conservative rulings, including in cases like Bostock v. Clayton County on LGBTQ rights and Dobbs v. Jackson on abortion, solidifying his role in shaping American jurisprudence.