On an often unpredictable Supreme Court, Justice Gorsuch is the latest wild card
WASHINGTON - Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Donald Trump's first appointee to the Supreme Court, is proving to be a different kind of conservative.
He is a libertarian who is quick to oppose unchecked government power, even in the hands of prosecutors or the police. And he is willing to go his own way and chart a course that does not always align with the traditional views on the right or the left.
In several of the term's biggest cases, Gorsuch voted as expected. He joined the court's conservatives, including Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, to reject legal challenges to partisan gerrymandering. The two Trump appointees voted in dissent to uphold the administration's plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.
In the case of whether a giant cross on a Maryland highway violated the separation of church and state, Gorsuch took the most conservative position and said lawsuits filed by people who are "offended," but not actually
