According to
The New York Times, Gorsuch's time on the Supreme Court has been defined by his "folksy demeanor and a flashy writing style" with
Jonathan H. Adler presenting Gorsuch and fellow Trump-appointed justice Kavanaugh as "a study in contrasts". The
Los Angeles Times described his rulings as those of "a wild card" and wrote that Gorsuch tends "to go his own way and chart a course that does not always align with the traditional views on the right or the left".
Vox has called him the court's "most libertarian" justice. According to
CNBC, Gorsuch's rulings address "historical injustice in a way that seems at odds with Republican attacks on 'woke' history's being taught in schools", particularly on questions involving Native Americans and tribal law. Gorsuch has a reputation as the most defendant-friendly justice on the court's conservative wing, with
Slate calling him and Ketanji Brown Jackson "the Supreme Court's oddest pairing" owing to their occasional tendency to side together on cases involving defendants' rights in criminal trials; Gorsuch sided with criminal defendants in 45 percent of cases the court heard.
Vox's Ian Millhiser has written that, while Gorsuch's rulings sometimes depart from orthodoxy on areas where there is philosophical disagreement among conservatives, they "reliably align with the consensus" in areas where there is unanimity in conservative ideology. A 2024 quantitative analysis of Gorsuch's rulings found that he broadly tended to side with justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito more than any other two justices.
Banking regulation Gorsuch wrote his first United States Supreme Court decision for a unanimous court in
Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc., 582 U.S. ___ (2017). The Court ruled against the borrowers, holding that
Santander in this case was not a debt collector under the
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act since it purchased the original defaulted car loans from
CitiFinancial for pennies on the dollar, making Santander the owner of the debts and not merely an agent. When the act was enacted, regulations were put on institutions that collected other companies' debts, but the act left unaddressed businesses collecting their own debts.
First Amendment Gorsuch joined the majority in
National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra and
Janus v. AFSCME, which both held unconstitutional certain forms of
compelled speech. Gorsuch authored the majority opinion in
Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), which concerned a public high school football coach who was fired for praying on the field after games. The opinion held that the coach's conduct was protected by both the Free Speech and Free Exercise clauses of the
First Amendment, and that the school's attempt to stop him was not mandated by the amendment's Establishment Clause. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in
303 Creative LLC v. Elenis (2023), which held that the Free Speech Clause protected a web designer's freedom to sell custom wedding websites only for opposite-sex weddings, notwithstanding a Colorado law prohibiting businesses from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.
LGBT rights In 2017, in
Pavan v. Smith, the Supreme Court "summarily overruled" the Arkansas Supreme Court's decision to deny same-sex married parents the same right to appear on the birth certificate. Gorsuch wrote a dissent, joined by Thomas and Alito, arguing that the Court should have fully heard the arguments of the case. In 2020, Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the combined cases of
Bostock v. Clayton County,
Altitude Express Inc. v. Zarda, and
R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, ruling that businesses cannot discriminate in employment against LGBTQ people. He argued that discrimination based on sexual orientation was illegal discrimination on the basis of sex, because the employer would be discriminating "for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex". The ruling was 6–3, with Gorsuch joined by Chief Justice Roberts and the Court's four Democratic appointees. Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissented from the decision, arguing that it improperly extended the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity. In October 2020, Gorsuch agreed with the justices in an "apparently unanimous" decision to deny an appeal from
Kim Davis, a county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. In June 2021, he joined the justices in the unanimous
Fulton v. City of Philadelphia decision, ruling in favor of a Catholic adoption agency that had been denied a contract by the City of Philadelphia due to the agency's refusal to adopt to same-sex couples. Gorsuch and Thomas joined Alito's concurrence, which argued for reconsidering, possibly overturning,
Employment Division v. Smith, "an important precedent limiting First Amendment protections for religious practices." Also in 2021, Gorsuch was one of three justices, with Thomas and Alito, who voted to hear an appeal from a Washington State florist who had refused service to a same-sex couple based on her religious beliefs against same-sex marriage. In November 2021, Gorsuch dissented from the Court's 6–3 decision to reject an appeal from
Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a hospital affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, which had sought to deny a
hysterectomy to a transgender patient on religious grounds. The decision to reject the appeal left in place a lower court ruling in the patient's favor; Thomas and Alito also dissented. In November 2023, Gorsuch voted with the 6–3 majority to decline to hear a case against Washington State's ban on conversion therapy for minors, allowing the law to stand; Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito dissented.
Second Amendment in 2019 Gorsuch joined Thomas's dissent from denial of certiorari in
Peruta v. San Diego County, in which the Ninth Circuit had upheld California's restrictive
concealed carry laws. Gorsuch wrote a statement regarding the denial of an application for a stay presented to Roberts in
Guedes v. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, a 2019
District of Columbia Circuit case challenging the Trump administration's ban on
bump stocks. In his statement Gorsuch criticized the Trump Administration's action as well as the justification the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit used for upholding the ban.
Vagueness doctrine In
Sessions v. Dimaya (2018), the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to uphold the Ninth Circuit's decision that the residual clause in the
Immigration and Nationality Act was
unconstitutionally vague. Gorsuch joined Justices Kagan, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor in the opinion, and wrote a separate concurrence reiterating the importance of the vagueness doctrine within Scalia's 2015 opinion in
Johnson. In
United States v. Davis (2019), Gorsuch wrote the Opinion of the Court striking down the residual clause of the
Hobbs Act based on the rationale used in
Dimaya.
Abortion In December 2018, Gorsuch dissented when the Court voted against hearing cases brought by the states of Louisiana and Kansas to deny Medicaid funding to
Planned Parenthood. He and Alito joined Thomas's dissent arguing that it was the Court's job to hear the case. In February 2019, Gorsuch sided with three of the Court's other conservative justices, rejecting a
stay to temporarily block a law
restricting abortion in Louisiana. The law that the court temporarily stayed, in a 5–4 decision, would require that doctors performing abortions have admitting privileges in a hospital. In June 2020, the Supreme Court struck down Louisiana's abortion restriction in
June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo, a 5–4 decision; Gorsuch was among the four dissenters. In September 2021, the Supreme Court
declined a petition to block a
Texas law banning abortion after six weeks; the vote was 5–4 with Gorsuch in the majority, joined by Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. In June 2022, Gorsuch was among the five justices who formed the majority opinion in ''
Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, overturning Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey''.
American Indian law and relations Gorsuch is regarded as an authority on
American Indian law. During his time on the Supreme Court, he has frequently affirmed tribal rights; his appointment to the Court was supported by multiple tribes and Native American organizations due to his favorable rulings as a Tenth Circuit judge. In March 2019, Gorsuch joined the four liberal justices (in two plurality opinions) in a 5–4 majority in
Washington State Dept. of Licensing v. Cougar Den, Inc. The Court's decision sided with the
Yakama Nation, striking down a
Washington state tax on transporting gasoline, on the basis of an 1855 treaty in which the Yakama ceded a large portion of Washington in exchange for certain rights. Gorsuch ended his concurrence by writing: "Really, this case just tells an old and familiar story. The State of Washington includes millions of acres that the Yakamas ceded to the United States under significant pressure. In return, the government supplied a handful of modest promises. The state is now dissatisfied with the consequences of one of those promises. It is a new day, and now it wants more. But today and to its credit, the Court holds the parties to the terms of their deal. It is the least we can do." In May 2019, Gorsuch again joined the four more liberal justices in a decision favorable to Native Americans' treaty rights, signing on to
Justice Sotomayor's opinion to reach a 5–4 decision in
Herrera v. Wyoming. The case held that hunting rights in
Montana and
Wyoming, granted by the United States government to the Native American
Crow people by an 1868 treaty, were not extinguished by the 1890 grant of statehood to Wyoming. In July 2020, Gorsuch again joined the liberal justices to make a 5–4 majority in
McGirt v. Oklahoma. The case considered whether much of eastern Oklahoma still remained under the jurisdiction of the "
Five Civilized Tribes", given that the Native American Treaties that had designated the region as under their reservation status had never been dissolved by Congress, and, if so, whether crimes committed by Native Americans against other Native Americans on tribal land were under the jurisdiction of Native Courts. The landmark decision in the affirmative, written by Gorsuch, found that "For Major Crimes Act purposes, land reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains 'Indian country. In the opinion, he wrote: "Today we are asked whether the land these treaties promised remains an Indian reservation for purposes of federal criminal law. Because Congress has not said otherwise, we hold the government to its word." While the state of Oklahoma had initially argued for the overturning of
McGirt, the Court agreed to hear only issues relating to the impacts of
McGirt. The 5–4 decision by Justice
Brett Kavanaugh opposed the more expanded viewpoint of non-Native criminal jurisdiction, with the opinion giving jurisdiction over such crimes to both tribal and federal/state governments. Gorsuch derided the opinion in his dissent, writing, "Where this Court once stood firm, today it wilts." On June 15, 2022, Gorsuch, Barrett, and the three liberal justices ruled in favor of the Native American Tribes of Texas in the case
Ysleta del Sur Pueblo v. Texas. The case concerned a dispute over whether Texas could control and regulate gambling on Texan Native American reservations. The initial conflict had developed from the tribes' having been in a trust with Texas from 1968 to 1987 before being granted a federal trust, resulting in a statute governing the tribes' subjugation to Texas's gambling restrictions. The ruling emphasized that the tribes have the power to regulate electronic bingo games on their land regardless of the state's prohibition of non-prohibited gambling. Thus, as long as a game is not outright prohibited by the state of Texas, the state government cannot impose regulations upon tribal games. Gorsuch emphasized in his opinion that "None of this is to say that the Tribe may offer gaming on whatever terms it wishes [...] Other gaming activities are subject to tribal regulation and must conform to the terms and conditions set forth in federal law."
COVID-19 restrictions On November 26, 2020, Gorsuch joined the majority opinion in
Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which struck down
COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the state of
New York on houses of worship. On May 18, 2023, Gorsuch issued a statement about the Court's decision to dismiss a lawsuit by several states aimed at continuing
Title 42 expulsions of immigrants, a policy instituted to prevent the introduction of COVID-19 cases to the United States. His statement criticized many of the restrictions the government had imposed since the pandemic started and said, "Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country." == Legal philosophy ==