Neil Gorsuch Supreme Court nomination

On January 31, 2017, soon after taking office, Republican President Donald Trump nominated Neil Gorsuch for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died almost one year earlier. When nominated, Gorsuch was a sitting judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, a position to which he had been appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006. President Barack Obama, a Democrat, had nominated Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to succeed Scalia on March 16, 2016, but the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate did not vote on the nomination. Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell argued that, as the presidential election cycle had already commenced, the appointment of the next justice had become a political issue to be decided by voters. The Senate Judiciary Committee therefore refused to consider Garland's nomination, keeping the vacancy open through the end of Obama's presidency on January 20, 2017.

Democratic Senators launched a filibuster against Gorsuch's nomination to block his confirmation. However, Republicans invoked the "nuclear option", eliminating the filibuster with respect to Supreme Court nominees. The Senate ultimately confirmed Gorsuch's nomination to the Supreme Court by a 54–45 vote on April 7, 2017 (all Republicans and three Democrats voted in his favor). Ten days after his confirmation, Gorsuch heard his first case as the 101st associate justice of the Court, in Anthony Perry vs. Merit Systems Protection Board.