DETROIT (AP) – During Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch’s Senate confirmation hearings, one case came up repeatedly: A truck driver was fired for leaving his trailer of meat on the side of an Illinois road after breaking down on a frigid night in 2009, fearing he’d freeze to death.
The federal appeals court judge last year dissented from a ruling ordering a trucking company to rehire Alphonse Maddin. Gorsuch argued he had to determine whether the trucking company’s decision to fire Maddin was legal, not “wise or kind.”
In Detroit, where Maddin lives and 400 miles away from that Capitol Hill hearing room, he finds it “surreal” his personal story has been the focus of national debate – and is now part of the discussion on whether someone ascends to the nation’s highest court.
Assured of support from majority Republicans, Gorsuch appears primed to join the bench. But Maddin, 48, is using his unexpected platform to render an opinion on a jurist he believes put ideology above human interest in his case.
“It makes me consider what would the consequences be if my case had gone to the Supreme Court level and had been adversely impacted by his ideology?” Maddin said Wednesday from the conference room of the lawyer who successfully argued on the former truck driver’s behalf.