WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has nominated Neil Gorsuch for a lifetime job on the US Supreme Court, picking the 49-year-old federal appeals court judge to restore the court’s conservative majority and help shape rulings on divisive issues such as abortion, gun control, the death penalty and religious rights.

The Colorado native faces a potentially contentious confirmation battle in the US Senate after Republicans last year refused to consider Democratic President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill the vacancy caused by the February 2016 death of conservative justice Antonin Scalia.

The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, indicated his party would mount a procedural hurdle requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat Senate rather than a simple majority to approveGorsuch, and expressed “very serious doubts” about the nominee. Liberal groups called for an all-out fight to reject Gorsuch while conservative groups and Republican senators heaped praise on him like “outstanding,” “impressive” and a “home run.”

Gorsuch is the youngest nominee to the nation’s highest court in more than a quarter century, and he could influence the direction of the court for decades. He is a judge on the Denver-based 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals and was appointed to that post by Republican President George W. Bush in 2006.

US President Donald Trump announces his nomination of Neil Gorsuch to be an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. (Photo: Reuters)

Announcing the selection to a night time crowd in the White House East Room flanked by the judge and his wife, Trump said Gorsuch‘s resume is “as good as it gets.” Trump, who took office on January 20, said he hopes Republicans and Democrats can come together on this nomination for the good of the country.

“Judge Gorsuch has outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind, tremendous disciple, and has earned bipartisan support,” Trump told an audience that included Scalia’s widow.

“Depending on their age, a justice can be active for 50 years. And his or her decisions can last a century or more, and can often be permanent,” Trump added.

Gorsuch is considered a conservative intellectual, known for backing religious rights, and is seen as very much in the mold of Scalia, a leading conservative voice on the court for decades.

“I respect … the fact that in our legal order it is for Congress and not the courts to write new laws,” Gorsuch said, as Trump looked on. “It is the role of judges to apply, not alter, the work of the people’s representatives. A judge who likes every outcome he reaches is very likely a bad judge, stretching for results he prefers rather than those the law demands.”

A senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the choice of Gorsuchwas seen by the White House as a significant departure from Supreme Court nominations from the recent past, given that many justices have come from the eastern United States. Gorsuchlives in Boulder, Colorado, where he raises horses and is a life-long outdoorsman.

The official said a screening committee helped in the selection process that included Vice President Mike Pence, White House counsel Don McGahn, chief of staff Reince Priebus and top strategist Steve Bannon.

Neil Gorsuch speaks after US President Donald Trump nominated him to be an associate justice of the US Supreme Court. (Photo: Reuters)

Gorsuch became the youngest US Supreme Court nominee since Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1991 selected conservative Clarence Thomas, who was 43 at the time.Gorsuch was in the same 1991 graduating class from Harvard Law School as Obama.

The official described Gorsuch as a mainstream judge who should easily be confirmed by the Senate. The Senate confirmed him for his current judgeship in 2006 by voice vote with no one voting against him.

Schumer and other Democrats signaled it may not be easy this time.

“Judge Gorsuch has repeatedly sided with corporations over working people, demonstrated a hostility toward women’s rights, and most troubling, hewed to an ideological approach to jurisprudence that makes me skeptical that he can be a strong, independent justice on the court,” Schumer said.

Alluding to Gorsuch‘s writings against euthanasia and assisted suicide, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden added, “No senator who believes that individual rights are reserved to the people, and not the government, can support this nomination.”

Michael Keegan, president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, described Gorsuch as an “ideological warrior who puts his own right-wing politics above the Constitution.”

Trump made his choice between two US appeals court judges, Gorsuch and Thomas Hardiman of the Philadelphia-based 3rd US Circuit Court of Appeals, according to a source involved in the selection process.

– Reuters