Judge Neil Gorsuch puts profits over people

AFSCME members get up to go to work every day to help our communities. We know how much our neighbors depend on the services public service we provide.

At the end of the day, the hard work we put in to our communities is about people.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s confirmed nominee for the United States Supreme Court, just doesn’t share our values.

For starters, he believes corporations are people.

Time after time, Judge Gorsuch has put company profits over the wellbeing and safety of workers—even in life and death scenarios.

In Compass Environmental, Inc. v. OSHRC, while the majority held that the employer must pay a fine for disregarding an internal policy and failing to train a worker who was electrocuted to death by high-voltage lines located near his work area. Judge Gorsuch issued a dissent and voted to throw the case out of court because he didn’t believe the employer was negligent.

As a federal judge, Neil Gorsuch supported a case that ruled corporations are “persons” and therefore could deny vital health care coverage to the company’s employees based on the corporate owners’ personal religious views.

In another case, Gorsuch ruled that a truck driver whose life was in danger while stranded in subzero temperatures should be fired because he disobeyed his employer’s order to stay put despite life-threatening conditions.

Before he was a judge, Gorsuch argued that it should be harder for regular people to band together to hold Wall Street and huge corporations accountable for fraud and other wrongdoing.

These are just some examples of how Neil Gorsuch will further tilt the scales of justice against working people.

Confirmed by the U.S. Senate on April 7, Justice Gorsuch will serve on the United States Supreme Court for the rest of his life. There is no going back. Donald Trump ran on a promise to lift up the forgotten man and woman, but his Supreme Court pick believes that the rights of corporations and Wall Street supersede of everyday people.