If Neil Gorsuch wins confirmation to the Supreme Court, he could cast the deciding vote on President Donald Trump’s travel ban against immigrants from certain countries. But it’s far from certain how he would vote.
According to an Associated Press review of Gorsuch’s rulings, he has not written extensively about immigration policy during a decade on the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. And the few rulings he has been involved in do not reveal how he might decide if given the opportunity to consider an immigration ban.
Many of the cases involved people challenging their prison sentences for returning to the U.S. illegally after having been deported. He has often been deferential to immigration authorities, but has also sided with immigrants.
“His record on immigration is a mixed bag, so it’s hard to predict how he would rule on any challenge to the executive order,” says Melissa Crow, legal director for the American Immigration Council, which challenged Trump’s original ban.
That order, which would have banned, people from seven majority Muslim counties, was put on hold last month by a federal appeals court, but Trump signed a new version March 6. That one removed Iraq from the list and eliminated a provision to give priority to religious minorities in allowing immigrants in.