The Gorsuch blackout: Judge Neil Gorsuch’s Hiring Practices: Privilege or Prejudice?

By Linn Washington, Jr.

If there is truth to the phrase “a man is known by the company he keeps,” how should Americans judge Neil Gorsuch, the man President Trump said is the perfect conservative to have a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court?

Judging from the company kept by Gorsuch in the form of the law clerks that he has hired, disturbing questions arise about the core character of this federal appeals court judge as a Supreme Court nominee.

Those questions regarding Gorsuch’s hiring practices are of scant concern to the senators on the Judiciary Committee, now finishing up hearings on this Supreme Court. They would appear to also be of scant concern to the news media covering this nomination judging by the lack of coverage of this particular issue.

It isn't as if the information isn't available. A review conducted by the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law of persons hired by Judge Gorsuch to serve in the prestigious position of law clerks has uncovered a disturbing pattern.

At the end of the, Lawyers Committee report on Gorsuch’s fitness to serve as a Supreme Court Justice in the section on Judicial Diversity, is this alarming statement arising from the Committee’s review of 40 persons Gorsuch hired as clerks: “…we have found no evidence that suggests that Judge Gorsuch ever hired an African-American clerk.”

Gorsuch, evidence indicates, also never hired a Hispanic or Native American law clerk since his appointment to the federal Tenth Circuit Appeals Court in 2006. Gorsuch did hire four Asian-American law clerks, a minimalist integration of his overwhelmingly white predominately white male law clerk staff.

Law clerks are young lawyers, generally fresh out of law school, that perform critical duties for a judge from conducting legal research to performing initial reviews of cases the judge has to handle to writing drafts of the decisions on cases the judge will issue. In some ways, law clerks are mini-judges with power that exceeds the paucity of legal/life experience they possess.

Now, Gorsuch not hiring any black law clerks is not clear-and-convincing evidence that he is a racist.

However hiring practices of the Colorado-born Gorsuch do raise questions about racism because if a hiring pattern like his existed in a private company it would raise arguable red flags regarding illegal discrimination...

For the rest of this article by LINN WASHINGTON, JR. in ThisCantBeHappening!, the uncompromised, collectively run, five-time Project Censored Award-winning online alternative news site, please go to:  www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/3505