The ascension of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court is expected to usher in a new conservative majority that could become part of President Trump's legacy. 
 
 Gorsuch, who was confirmed by the Senate on Friday, is widely expected to shift the ideological balance of the court to the right, with his views seen as mostly in line with the man he is replacing: the late Justice Antonin Scalia. 
 
 But some court watchers say Gorsuch may be even more conservative than Scalia, his mentor and a fellow adherent to the originalist view of the Constitution. 
 
 “I think it’s interesting he’s cast as either a follower of Scalia or a more temperate version of Scalia, but in fact it seems that he may be quite to the right of Scalia in certain areas,” said Caroline Fredrickson, president of the left-leaning American Constitution Society for Law and Policy. 
 
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 Like Scalia, Gorsuch was part of a majority ruling in favor of Hobby Lobby stores. His 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Affordable Care Act could not compel certain companies to provide health coverage for contraception if it violated their religious beliefs. 
 
 The Supreme Court upheld that ruling in 2014. 
 
 While Gorsuch ducked questions at his confirmation hearings about his views on equal protections for LGBTQ Americans, liberal groups expect him to give heavy weight to religious freedom in decisions about civil rights. 
 
 “I can see efforts to make it easier for people to opt out of providing services,” Fredrickson said. 
 
 “I can see letting the florist, the caterer, the dress maker have no requirement to provide gays and lesbians with any services ... There are a lot of different ways, even if a right is not taken away in name, it’s gone because it’s impossible to exercise.” 
 
 Conservatives say liberal groups are reading Gorsuch’s record out of context, noting he has never actually ruled on any LGBTQ rights case. 
 
 Carrie Severino, chief counsel for the conservative Judicial Crisis Network that lobbied hard for Gorsuch’s confirmation, said he has a record of following the law without consideration for politics. 
 
 Yet conservatives do agree with liberals than Gorsuch is more conservative than Scalia in at least one area of case law, known as the Chevron deference. 
 
 The administrative law principle, which says courts should defer to an agency’s interpretation of vague laws unless they are unreasonable, was established by the Supreme Court in the 1984 landmark decision Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council Inc. 
 
 It’s a court precedent even Scalia upheld. 
 
 “Broad delegation to the Executive is the hallmark of the modem administrative state; agency rulemaking powers are the rule rather than, as they once were, the exception; and as the sheer number of modern departments and agencies suggests, we are awash in agency ‘expertise,’ ” Scalia said while speaking at Duke Law School in 1989. 
 
 But in a concurring opinion in a case on the 10th Circuit last year, Gorsuch argued that Chevron should be reconsidered. 
 
 “If this goliath of modern administrative law were to fall? Surely Congress could and would continue to pass statutes for executive agencies to enforce," he wrote. 
 
 "And just as surely agencies could and would continue to offer guidance on how they intend to enforce those statutes. The only difference would be that courts would then fulfill their duty to exercise their independent judgment about what the law is.” 
 
 Liberal groups say that line of thinking could put Obama-era public health and safety protections at risk, as many of them are already being challenged in the courts. 
 
 “He will, unlike Scalia, restrict the ability of agencies to protect our health and safety … and second-guess agency experts,” said Nan Aron, president of the Alliance for Justice. 
 
 “His decisions favor corporations and special interests at the expense of consumers and workers, and we believe he will continue this trend on the Supreme Court.” 
 
 But John Malcolm, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, says Gorsuch isn’t favoring one administration or another in making the argument against Chevron deference. 
 
 “His approach of less deference to agencies would apply during a Democratic administration and Republican administration,” he said. “It’s not based on whether he likes the executive branch rulings or not.” 
 
 Malcolm said Gorsuch is arguing for the separation of powers by saying it’s a judge’s role to give the best interpretation to ambiguous laws, rather than deferring to agency interpretations. 
 
 “Gorsuch would show no more deference to Trump administration agencies than he would Obama administration agencies,” he said. 
 
 Other legal experts cautioned that it’s hard to guess how Gorsuch will rule on any given issue. 
 
 “You can’t really know even if you read all his circuit opinions how it will work out once he’s on the court,” said Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond School of Law. 
 
 Tobias argues that the types of cases heard by the 10th Circuit vary from those heard by the Supreme Court, which often handles broader constitutional questions. 
 
 “And I think that to some extent justices change when they are on the court for good or bad and it just depends on the issue,” he said. 
 
 However he rules, Gorsuch’s impact on the court will be felt for years to come. He is 49 and will have a lifetime appointment. 
 
 "If he turns out to be conservative, it solidifies the conservative bloc in a way that wouldn’t have happened if you had someone older," Tobias said. 
 
 Gorsuch will be sworn in as a justice on Monday. ||||| Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings. 
 
 The U.S. Supreme Court term is nearly over, but the influence of the newest justice, Neil Gorsuch, is likely to have an immediate effect on one of the most important cases yet to be heard and on helping select cases the court will take up next. 
 
 History will be made Monday when Justice Anthony Kennedy administers the judicial oath to Gorsuch at a White House ceremony. Never before has a sitting justice sworn in a former clerk to become a colleague on the high court bench. Chief Justice John Roberts will privately administer the separate constitutional oath earlier in the day. 
 
 The court hears the final 13 cases of the term during the last two weeks in April, when it will be back at full strength for the first time since Antonin Scalia died 14 months ago. Gorsuch will not be able to vote on cases that were argued before he arrived at the court, but he may have a decisive role to play in an important freedom of religion case to be heard April 19. 
 
 At stake are laws in well over half the states that prohibit spending tax dollars to support churches. The states say the restrictions are necessary to keep the government from meddling in religious affairs. But to the challengers, they're nothing more than a form of discrimination. 
 
 Related: Neil Gorsuch Confirmed to Supreme Court After Senate Uses 'Nuclear Option' 
 
 The case involves a lawsuit brought by Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Missouri. It applied for money from a state program that provides grants to non-profits seeking to cover gravel playgrounds with a rubber surface made from recycled tires. The church wanted to improve the playground at its pre-school and daycare center. 
 
 But the state rejected the application, citing a provision in the Missouri constitution that says "no money shall ever be taken from the treasury, directly or indirectly, in any of any church, sect, or denomination of religion." 
 
 As a judge on the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver, Gorsuch supported a private company and an order of Catholic nuns who argued in two separate cases they should not have to provide contraceptive insurance coverage for their employees — despite Obamacare's requirements — because doing so would violate their religious beliefs. 
 
 Religious freedom is also at the heart of a pending case the court has not yet agreed to hear, testing whether businesses can refuse, on religious grounds, to provide services for same-sex weddings. 
 
 Over the past few months, the justices have repeatedly listed the case for discussion at their private conferences where they decide which cases to hear. Gorsuch could provide the fourth vote needed to grant review. 
 
 Related: LGBT Job Discrimination Is Prohibited by Civil Rights Law, Federal Appeals Court Rules 
 
 That case will likely be among those discussed when Gorsuch meets with the rest of the court in a closed-door conference Friday — his first official act as a justice. 
 
 Another case awaiting action asks the court to decide whether the Second Amendment provides the right to carry a gun outside the home. 
 
 After issuing its landmark ruling in 2008 that the Second Amendment provides a right to keep a handgun at home for self-defense, the Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to step back into the issue. The justices have denied review of dozens of cases intended to test the reach of gun laws outside the home. 
 
 Though Justice Gorsuch cannot vote on cases already argued but not yet decided, he could still end up playing a role. If the court is tied 4-4 on any of those cases, the justices could order them to be re-argued, which would allow him to participate and eliminate the possibility of another deadlock. 
 
 The Senate voted 54-45 Friday to confirm his nomination. The entire process, from President Trump's announcement to the final vote, took 66 days. That's two days faster than the average for the eight other current justices. 
 
 At age 49, Gorsuch will be the youngest justice on the court by more than a decade. The average age of his colleagues is just shy of 70. At 84, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the oldest justice on the court. ||||| Rating is available when the video has been rented. 
 
 This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. ||||| Not too long before he was nominated to fill Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat on the Supreme Court, Judge Neil Gorsuch published two opinions – in the same case – staking out some genuinely heterodox positions on administrative law. In the now-relatively well-known case of Gutierrez-Brizuela v. Lynch, Gorsuch wrote both the majority decision for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit and his own concurrence, using the latter as an opportunity to argue against what is known in the law as “Chevron deference.” 
 
 The court’s holding in the 1984 case Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council directs courts to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes; it is a foundational case in terms of the existing structure of American government, because it grants policymaking flexibility to the agencies that line Constitution and Independence Avenues, and reduces the relative role of courts (and the congressional statutes they are interpreting) in providing fixed stars for our core federal regulatory regimes. In a way, Chevron deference is responsible for making the views of the current head of the Environmental Protection Agency far more important than the content of the Clean Air Act in terms of setting national anti-pollution policy. Gorsuch’s opinion in Gutierrez-Brizuela points out that this result essentially inverts the conventional view of the separation of powers, under which Congress sets national policy through statutes, the courts interpret those statutes to “say what the law is,” and the executive branch carries the law into execution, rather than revising it from one administration to the next according to its policy whims. So we have the odd situation that Gorsuch is viewed as a revolutionary thinker – as taking up arms against a rule at the heart of modern administrative law – by advocating for an understanding of American government we all (should have) learned in high-school civics. 
 
 A defender of Chevron would point out that something like its rule is necessary for the government to solve modern problems. Congress can only ever act in fits and starts, and cannot engage in day-to-day technical judgments about, say, what kind of substances are “air pollutants” and what quantity of them is dangerous to human health. So Congress instead sets out the broad policy aims, and then empowers an administrator or cabinet secretary to carry out those aims through her agency’s expertise. Requiring more of Congress is unrealistic, and letting courts freeze the meaning of ambiguous terms like “pollutant” through judicial interpretation means that Congress’ policy goals will be frustrated when times or scientific knowledge change. The core case for Chevron thus comes from big policy statutes that broadly create or empower federal agencies with technical expertise – statutes like the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act (EPA); the Federal Communications Act (Federal Communications Commission); the Federal Power Act and Natural Gas Act (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission); the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (Food and Drug Administration); or the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Occupational Safety and Health Administration). What is particularly notable about Gorsuch’s famous forays into administrative-law jurisprudence and Chevron deference is how distant they are from these fundamental applications of the doctrine. 
 
 In fact, Gorsuch’s two best-known decisions on administrative law – Gutierrez-Brizuela and De Niz Robles v. Lynch – both involve one of the weakest possible contexts in which to defend Chevron doctrine. The administrative agency at issue in both is the Board of Immigration Appeals, the primary function of which is just to decide the host of quasi-judicial immigration cases that must be adjudicated throughout the nation every year. In both cases, the complaint was that the BIA had changed the legal rules on the immigrants at issue and then applied those rule changes retroactively, implicating core fairness concerns, but no real issue of technical judgment or agency expertise. 
 
 Remarkably, Gorsuch’s next-best-known administrative law decision shares this feature. In United States v. Nichols, the issue was (again) the power of a non-technical administrator (the attorney general) to create retroactive effects on individuals – although Nichols, even more dramatically than the cases above, involved the agency interpreting a criminal statute. Gorsuch’s opinion would have denied the agency this power under the statute, or else recognized that Congress’ delegating this authority to the executive branch would violate the (now rarely invoked) non-delegation doctrine. Again, Gorsuch is fundamentally sticking up for the classic conception of separation of powers, and the priority position of Congress and the courts in making and interpreting the laws that determine the rights of individuals. But, again, the agency action at issue here is quite far removed from the core purposes of Chevron, in a way that highlights what is bothersome about the doctrine, and masks what it gets right. 
 
 All of this is to say that Gorsuch’s atypical take on administrative law may be rooted in his atypical perspective on the subject as a judge on the 10th Circuit, rather than on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The big agency rulemakings on technical questions that sit much closer to the core of Chevron doctrine tend to come up through the D.C. Circuit, and would accordingly jump to mind for justices who got their start there or whose government background involved these kinds of administrative-law issues. (Out of the previous nine justices, that is, remarkably, Scalia, Chief Justice John Roberts, and Justices Clarence Thomas, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.) The D.C. Circuit does not have any immigration cases, however, and so Gorsuch’s perspective on applications for Chevron doctrine in that context will be relatively new on the court. Of course, Gorsuch’s opinions recognize that his critique of Chevron must extend to cases in which the doctrine makes much more sense than in the narrow area in which he is writing. But because judges are people, Gorsuch’s views on these questions are quite likely to be influenced by his exposure to cases in which Chevron doctrine has far more uncomfortable effects in terms of allocating the responsibility for “saying what the law is” between agencies and courts. 
 
 All in all, there is no question that a deep dive into Gorsuch’s writings in this area marks him as a unique skeptic of certain core doctrines of administrative law and the deference they provide to the agencies – particularly on questions of how to read their operative statutes. It is impossible in this regard to confuse Gorsuch with Breyer or Kagan, say, in terms of the deference they are likely to show towards administrative decision making in future cases. What is far less clear is whether and how far Gorsuch’s outspoken skepticism extends to the far-more-central cases of agency rulemaking in which Chevron developed and in which it continues to play a core role in making federal regulation effective. That much remains to be seen. 
 
 Recommended Citation: Eric Citron, The roots and limits of Gorsuch’s views on Chevron deference, SCOTUSblog (Mar. 17, 2017, 11:26 AM), http://www.scotusblog.com/2017/03/roots-limits-gorsuchs-views-chevron-deference/ ||||| Becoming the ninth Supreme Court Justice, Judge Neil M. Gorsuch will have little time to get comfortable in the surroundings before he could be casting significant – and perhaps even decisive –votes. He joins a court of eight members, who have sometimes struggled to find enough common ground to avoid splitting evenly, a result that settles nothing. 
 
 In fact, Gorsuch could hold the decisive vote in a case that he is expected to join his new colleagues in hearing on Wednesday, April 19. Potentially one of the biggest cases of this term, it tests the rights of religiously affiliated organizations to equal access to government benefits. The court granted review on that case – Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer -- almost 15 months ago, but has been holding off on considering it apparently because of the possibility that the eight Justices might divide 4-to-4 on it. 
 
 That challenge, and others he will face, will not be entirely new and strange: he served as a law clerk at the court almost 25 years ago. But he will be the first to do that and then return later to serve alongside the Justice for whom he had worked: Anthony M. Kennedy, now the court’s longest-serving member. 
 
 After the new Justice takes two official oaths and shows up for work, his first assignment will be a role as a “Circuit Justice” with the duty to handle emergency matters that come up from a lower court in one of the nation’s 13 federal circuits (geographic regions). Each of the Justices gets assigned to at least one of those circuit regions; Gorsuch will pick up a circuit now assigned to a Justice who has more than one. 
 
 Often, those Circuit matters involve last-minute pleas by prison inmates seeking to put off their scheduled executions, but these filings can also involve significant constitutional or legal questions. As is normal, Gorsuch will have the option of acting on such matters alone or sharing the action with his colleagues. 
 
 
 
 First Matters Before Gorsuch 
 
 One of the most significant emergency matters that is likely to reach the court soon, perhaps this month, would be a request to take some preliminary action on President Trump’s executive order limiting entry into this country of foreign nationals from Mideast nations. Although the question may arise in a preliminary sense, it could be as important as whether the government can enforce key parts of the controversial presidential order. 
 
 When the eight-member court last took a significant action in a major controversy over immigration policy, it split 4-to-4 last term and thus left intact lower court rulings that had barred President Obama from putting into effect his delayed deportation order for individuals who had lived for long periods in the U.S. after having entered illegally or having stayed illegally after their arrival. 
 
 There are real similarities between the issues of presidential power surrounding both the Obama and Trump initiatives. A Gorsuch vote on the Trump order thus could turn out to be crucial. 
 
 His first scheduled working session with all of his colleagues will be on Thursday, April 13, when they gather behind closed doors to discuss new cases they might accept for review or turn aside. The other Justices who are working on drafts of opinions on cases already argued will be deciding at that session whether they have any ready for public release during the following week. 
 
 Gorsuch And Current Cases 
 
 A new Justice ordinarily will not take part in deciding cases that had been heard before he or she joined the court. If, however, the other Justices have wound up voting 4-to-4 on a not-yet-decided case, they could schedule a new hearing on such a case, probably to occur during the next term that starts in October, when Gorsuch could take part. 
 
 Among already-pending new cases that raise major controversies that could come up for early consideration by Gorsuch and his colleagues, at the April 13 session or later this Spring, are disputes over gay rights, gun rights and voting rights. 
 
 The gay rights case, if granted review, would put before the Justices one of the key issues that has arisen in the wake of the court’s ruling nearly two years ago in favor of same-sex marriage (the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges). That question is whether those who object to such marriages for religious reasons have a right not to provide goods or services to such couples. 
 
 That dispute not only would draw the court back into the midst of the abiding nationwide controversy over gay rights, but also would provide a new test for the nine-member court’s attitudes toward church-government relations. The case is Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The specific question is whether a state can constitutionally enforce its civil rights law against a bakery whose owner refused, for religious reasons, to make a cake for a same-sex couple’s wedding party. 
 
 Judge Gorsuch has familiarity with this kind of conflict. As a federal Circuit Court judge, he wrote an opinion in favor of the religious freedom claims of the family owners of the Hobby Lobby Stores, a retail chain of arts and crafts supplies. The religiously devout family objected to a requirement under the federal Affordable Care Act that their stores provide birth-control methods for their female employees. A divided Supreme Court later agreed with the victory handed to the family by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. 
 
 The new Justice will face a religious freedom issue again in the scheduled April 19 hearing in the Trinity Lutheran Church case. That involves the constitutional question of whether a religiously-operated school has an equal right to take part in a state program of handing out materials made from used tires to be used as school playground matting. Such aid was barred for the school under the Missouri state constitution’s ban on any public aid to religion, even though the specific benefit had no religious content. 
 
 After taking no action on that case in more than a year, the Supreme Court has scheduled it for the final sitting of oral arguments without knowing whether it would have a ninth Justice by then, but perhaps in the hope that it might. 
 
 A dozen other cases set for the April hearing session will not be particularly challenging for Gorsuch or his colleagues, or of much interest to the general public. Each of the others involves a quite narrow issue – the kind of cases the court has been regularly taking on in the 14 months that it has operated with only eight members, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. 
 
 At least one of those cases will be assigned to Gorsuch to write the court’s opinion, because each Justice usually gets at least one such assignment out of each argument sitting. 
 
 If, as seems quite likely, the court accepts any new cases for review between now and the end of the current term, probably in late June, those will be heard during the next term opening in October. 
 
 New Cases And Gorsuch 
 
 Among the new cases that Gorsuch and his colleagues will confront during coming weeks is a deeply controversial gun rights dispute, in the case of Peruta v. California. The question is whether the Second Amendment’s “right to keep and bear arms” protects the carrying of a gun outside the home, even in a concealed way. In the nine years since the court first ruled that the Amendment guarantees a personal right to have a gun for self-defense, it has never agreed to rule on a case involving questions about carrying a firearm in public. 
 
 The court also must decide fairly soon what to do with a major case on voting rights – always a staple on the modern court’s docket. The case of North Carolina v. North Carolina NAACP involves the constitutionality of one of most restrictive voting rights laws in the nation, which includes such restrictions that a lower court found it to have revived the anti-racial specter of “Jim Crow” discrimination. 
 
 After North Carolina elected a new Democratic governor, the state’s new leadership asked the court to simply dismiss the state’s pending appeal seeking to defend those restrictions. That request seems to have been giving the eight Justices some difficulty. 
 
 Another voting rights controversy that has just reached the court is a test of whether courts have any valid way to judge the constitutionality of “partisan gerrymandering” – the practice of drafting new election districts specifically to give one political party’s candidates a special advantage in an election. The new case involves an appeal by the state of Wisconsin, urging the court not to allow such challenges to go forward in the courts. The court has never been able to craft a workable constitutional formula on when there has been too much partisanship in a redistricting plan. 
 
 The newest form of civil rights claims – the question of whether transgender people are legally protected from discrimination in government programs or policies by laws that outlaw bias based on sex – is developing in lower courts across the country and is certain to be before the court before very long. It did reach the court earlier this term in a case involving a transgender youth in a Virginia high school who was denied access to the restroom that matches his gender identity, but the Justices chose to send that dispute back to a lower court to examine the Trump Administration’s change of policy to oppose legal protection for transgender people. 
 
 An older controversy, over whether the foreign nationals that the U.S. has detained at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are protected by any legal rights under American law, has been largely absent from the court’s docket for several years, but two new cases would thrust the court back into depths of that controversy. The two appeals raise basic questions about the legality of the war crimes tribunals at Guantanamo, which have been largely stalled by legal missteps and complications. 
 
 The arrival of a new Justice could add a new perspective to that lingering controversy, since the legal fate of the Guantanamo detainees has never been an issue before the federal appeals court on which Judge Gorsuch has been serving. 
 
 In general, as soon as the new member of the court takes a seat at the end of the bench in his first public session, his every utterance – and even his posture – will draw the keenest attention for signs of how he will perform as the successor to Justice Scalia. His opponents in the Senate argued that he would be at least as conservative as Scalia had been, and maybe more. Lawyers and other court observers will be especially attentive to signs of his ideological leanings. 
 
 Legendary journalist Lyle Denniston is Constitution Daily’s Supreme Court correspondent. Denniston has written for us as a contributor since June 2011 and has covered the Supreme Court since 1958. His work also appears on lyldenlawnews.com. 
 
 Sign up to receive Constitution Weekly, our email roundup of constitutional news and debate, at bit.ly/constitutionweekly ||||| Neil Gorsuch, President Trump's pick to fill the Supreme Court slot left open by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, was confirmed by the Senate in a bruising fight, after the upper chamber's Majority Leader Mitch McConnell invoked the so-called nuclear option, which allowed Republicans to end debate with a simple majority of votes, rather than the traditional minimum of 60, and push through the nomination. 
 
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 On Monday, Gorsuch will be publicly sworn in as the 113th Supreme Court justice at 11 a.m. ET at the White House. 
 
 To help understand why the addition of Gorsuch, a judicial conservative ideologically similar to Scalia, to the nation's highest court matters, we reached out via email to Kate Shaw, an ABC News contributor and a Cardozo School of Law professor. 
 
 Let's step back for a second. What is the broad impact on the ideological makeup of the Supreme Court with the addition of Gorsuch? How do you see him fitting in on the court? He knows Anthony Kennedy well, yes? 
 
 Shaw: For over a decade, the court has been divided between four more conservative justices, four more liberal justices and Justice Kennedy, the swing vote on nearly every issue. Justice Scalia's sudden death nearly 14 months ago obviously changed that balance: Over the last year, the best outcome the conservative justices could hope for in most cases was a 4-4 tie if they could attract Justice Kennedy's vote. So Gorsuch's confirmation restores the state of affairs that existed on the court before Justice Scalia's death — which means the answers to a lot of pressing legal questions are again in Justice Kennedy's hands. 
 
 And yes, Gorsuch does know Justice Kennedy. Gorsuch served as a clerk for Kennedy as part of his clerkship for retired Justice Byron White. (Law clerks for retired justices frequently also become part of the chambers of an active justice.) When Gorsuch joins the court, it will be the first time a former law clerk will serve alongside his or her former justice on the court. 
 
 What happens now? What's the first thing on his plate? Does he report to work immediately? 
 
 He'll need to be formally sworn in, which involves taking two separate oaths of office — one he'll take at the Supreme Court and one at the White House. After that, he'll likely get to work immediately. The court is on recess this week but will resume hearing cases on Monday, April 17, and I'm sure he'll soon be hard at work — more likely already is hard at work — preparing to hear those cases. He won't participate in deciding any of the cases the court has already heard, unless the court decides to have them reargued, which it could well do in any case that appears to be deadlocked 4-4. 
 
 What upcoming cases should we watch closely that Gorsuch could affect now that he has joined the court? 
 
 The most anticipated case in the April sitting is probably Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, a case about whether a state constitutional provision that prevents state funds from going to religious institutions violates the federal Constitution — both the clause protecting the free exercise of religion and the clause guaranteeing the equal protection of the laws. Here a church that contains a playground applied for a state program that helps nonprofits resurface their playgrounds. The church was denied access to the program because of its status as a church, and it argues that this is unconstitutional. 
 
 I'd say the other big cases to watch right now are the various challenges to the president's second travel ban executive order. Both the 4th Circuit and the 9th Circuit will hear arguments in May on the constitutionality of the travel ban. Whatever happens in those cases, the losing party is virtually certain to seek Supreme Court review. Although the court doesn't typically hear cases between April and October, it's certainly not unheard of for it to do so — and I think it's quite possible here, in particular if the administration loses and asks the court to act quickly. The court could also rule without hearing arguments. 
 
 Let's dive into the travel ban for a moment. If the fight over the travel ban reaches the Supreme Court, you're saying it's possible that Gorsuch could give the conservative wing the votes needed to rule in favor of the Trump administration? 
 
 It's definitely possible. That's likely why the Trump administration took its time appealing its district court losses in both Maryland and Hawaii — because it wanted Gorsuch in place and thinks it has a good chance of getting his vote. Of course, there's no guarantee that Gorsuch will vote with the administration, but if the rest of the conservatives vote to uphold the ban, it's hard for me to see him breaking with them in his first major vote on the court. 
 
 From Gorsuch's record, are there cases where he might not necessarily rule as conservatives might expect him to? 
 
 Well, one of the threads of his jurisprudence that's gotten a lot of attention in the last few months is his skepticism of doctrines that require courts to defer to administrative agencies. Those views could result in him striking down some of the deregulatory actions the agencies are in the early stages of taking. 
 
 One area in which he might vote differently from Justice Scalia — and, in fact, could be more conservative — is campaign finance regulation. Though Scalia, like the other conservatives, was in general quite hostile to campaign finance regulation, he was actually a supporter of the constitutionality of disclosure requirements. (He wrote in one case, though this was not actually about campaign contributions, that "requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.") [Justice Clarence] Thomas, by contrast, thinks that compelled disclosure — for example, of the names and personal details of campaign contributors — violates the First Amendment. And it seems to me possible that Gorsuch could sign on to the Thomas position. In a largely deregulated campaign finance landscape, disclosure requirements are one of the only remaining mechanisms by which money in politics is regulated, so this could have a major impact. 
 
 How will the court be affected if the president is able to add another conservative justice? 
 
 I'd say the most pressing questions here are around the future of abortion. The court has long been closely divided on the question of whether the Constitution protects abortion at all, with a strong minority of the court taking the position that it does not. We don't know for sure what Gorsuch thinks about abortion, but a lot of people assume that he shares Justice Scalia's view that Roe v. Wade and its successor Planned Parenthood v. Casey were incorrectly decided and should be overturned. 
 
 Let's assume that's true. If Justice [Ruth Bader] Ginsburg were to leave the court and be replaced by a conservative like Gorsuch, you'd have only four votes in favor of Roe and Casey: [Stephen] Breyer, [Sonia] Sotomayor, [Elena] Kagan and Kennedy. (Kennedy joined the liberals last year in striking down a restrictive Texas abortion law. He's far more likely to uphold certain abortion restrictions than the liberal justices, but the most recent signs from him are that he has no interest in overruling Roe.) 
 
 This means that the Constitution's protection of abortion could be in real peril with another Trump appointment. I think at that point a lot of attention would shift to Chief Justice [John] Roberts. As a general matter, his inclination in such matters is to proceed incrementally. The court could uphold a series of abortion regulations, weakening the foundations of Roe and Casey rather than overruling them outright. The question then would be whether the court would be willing to take the next step and actually overrule them. Roberts is a real institutionalist, so it's possible that he'd take seriously the concerns that overruling long-settled precedents on such a divisive social issue might hurt the court's legitimacy and standing in the eyes of the public. That's essentially what happened in Casey, when everyone thought Roe would be overruled after personnel changes at the court, but it wasn't. ||||| Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Gorsuch will be confirmed as a Supreme Court justice on Monday 
 
 Neil Gorsuch has been confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, following a bitter and partisan battle over his nomination by President Trump. 
 
 The conservative judge could be required early on to weigh in on several hot-button issues due before the court, including religious freedoms, gun rights and Mr Trump's travel ban. 
 
 Other cases which deadlocked between the eight current justices may be reheard now that there is a ninth justice in place to break the tie on America's highest court. 
 
 Here are some of the key cases he may have a hand in deciding in the coming weeks and months. 
 
 Church and state 
 
 Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v Comer 
 
 One of the first cases Justice Gorsuch will hear, with oral arguments due to begin next week, concerns separation of church and state. 
 
 A school run by Trinity Lutheran Church in Missouri sought to take part in a state programme that resurfaces playgrounds with rubber from recycled tires. 
 
 But the Missouri Department of Natural Resources denied the request, arguing that the state constitution prohibited funding of religious organisations. 
 
 Representing the church, the Alliance Defending Freedom said the denial infringed the church's First Amendment rights. 
 
 The case was accepted by the court in January last year but delayed a hearing for 15 months. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Neil Gorsuch could influence American policy for decades 
 
 Religious freedoms 
 
 Masterpiece Cakeshop v Colorado Civil Rights Commission 
 
 The Supreme Court is due to decide this week whether to accept the case of a baker in Colorado who refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, on religious grounds. 
 
 The lower courts found that the owners of Masterpiece Cakeshop had violated Colorado's Anti-Discrimination Act (CADA), and the decision was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. 
 
 The case has been under consideration for acceptance by the Supreme Court since January, suggesting that Judge Gorsuch could tip the balance either way. 
 
 He has previously found in favour of religious freedoms in the workplace, including in two of his most well-known cases. 
 
 In Burwell v Hobby Lobby and Little Sisters of the Poor v Burwell, Judge Gorsuch ruled that a requirement for employers to cover contraception under their health insurance plans infringed their religious freedoms. 
 
 Gun rights 
 
 Peruta v San Diego 
 
 This takes up a lower court ruling that said the second amendment alone did not grant California gun owners the right to carry a concealed weapon in public places. The ruling granted counties the right to apply additional tests before granting a permit, including whether the applicant showed "good cause" to require it. 
 
 The argument essentially boils down to whether the existing right to gun ownership for self defence at home extends to carrying a concealed weapon in public places. 
 
 "Any prohibition or restriction a state may choose to impose on concealed carry - including a requirement of 'good cause,' however defined - is necessarily allowed by the [Second] Amendment," said the lower court ruling. 
 
 The ruling led to variation across counties, with some sheriff's offices denying nearly all concealed carry applications. The restrictions are being challenged by a group of Second Amendment campaigners. 
 
 Travel ban 
 
 President Trump's controversial executive order banning travel from six Muslim-majority countries is probably heading to the Supreme Court later this year. 
 
 Justice Gorsuch repeatedly declined to comment on the issue during his confirmation hearings, but a Supreme Court case would provide a public test of his independence from Mr Trump, who nominated him for the court. 
 
 The order is due to go before the Fourth Circuit and Ninth Circuit court in May. 
 
 Another immigration issue which could make its way to the court at some point is Mr Trump's attempt to strip federal funding from so-called "sanctuary cities" - cities that refuse to comply with federal orders to detain immigrants. 
 
 Mexico shooting 
 
 Hernandez v Mesa 
 
 This is the case of a 15-year-old unarmed Mexican boy who was on the Mexican side of the border when he was shot dead in 2010 by a US border patrol agent, in disputed circumstances. Sergio Hernandez's family want to sue the agent for infringing the boy's constitutional rights. 
 
 The Supreme Court has already heard oral arguments in the case but the justices did not reach any conclusion. That opens the way for the case to be reheard with Justice Gorsuch on the bench. 
 
 Voting rights 
 
 North Carolina v North Carolina NAACP 
 
 In July, judges on the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a North Carolina voting overhaul that they said targeted African Americans "with almost surgical precision". 
 
 The case went to the Supreme Court in August but split the justices 4/4 over whether to prevent the overhaul coming into effect before November's general election. 
 
 With the case due to go before the court again, Judge Gorsuch could swing the result either way. ||||| President Donald Trump watches as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch hugs his wife Marie Louise in the Rose Garden of the White House White House in Washington, Monday, April 10, 2017, after Supreme Court... (Associated Press) 
 
 President Donald Trump watches as Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch hugs his wife Marie Louise in the Rose Garden of the White House White House in Washington, Monday, April 10, 2017, after Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, administered a public oath of office to Gorsuch. (AP Photo/Carolyn... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump praised new Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch during a White House swearing-in ceremony on Monday as a jurist who will rule "not on his personal preferences but based on a fair and objective reading of the law." 
 
 In the Rose Garden ceremony, Trump said Americans would see in Gorsuch "a man who is deeply faithful to the Constitution of the United States" and predicted greatness for the 49-year-old former appeals court judge from Colorado. 
 
 "I have no doubt you will go down as one of the truly great justices in the history of the U.S.," Trump said. The president noted that the successful nomination came during his first 100 days in office and added: "You think that's easy?" 
 
 Gorsuch, who restores the court's conservative majority, was sworn in during the ceremony by Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom he once served as a law clerk. It was the second of two oaths — the first was conducted privately in the Justices' Conference Room by Chief Justice John Roberts. 
 
 In remarks in the Rose Garden, Gorsuch said he was humbled by his ascendance to the nation's high court and thanked his former law clerks, saying of his former law clerks, "your names are etched in my heart forever." 
 
 Gorsuch promised to be a "faithful servant of the Constitution and laws of this great nation." 
 
 He fills the nearly 14-month-old vacancy created after the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who anchored the court's conservative wing for nearly three decades before he died unexpectedly in February 2016. In nominating Gorsuch, Trump said he fulfilled a campaign pledge to pick someone in the mold of Scalia. 
 
 During 11 years on the federal appeals court in Denver, Gorsuch mirrored Scalia's originalist approach to the law, interpreting the Constitution according to the meaning understood by those who drafted it. Like Scalia, Gorsuch is a gifted writer with a flair for turning legal jargon into plain language people can understand. 
 
 Gorsuch will be seated just in time to hear one of the biggest cases of the term: a religious rights dispute over a Missouri law that bars churches from receiving public funds for general aid programs. 
 
 His 66-day confirmation process was swift, but bitterly divisive. It saw Senate Republicans trigger the "nuclear option" to eliminate the 60-vote filibuster threshold for Gorsuch and all future high court nominees. The change allowed the Senate to hold a final vote to approve Gorsuch with a simple majority. 
 
 Most Democrats refused to support Gorsuch because they were still seething over the Republican blockade last year of President Barack Obama's pick for the same seat, Merrick Garland. Senate Republicans refused to even hold a hearing for Garland, saying a high court replacement should be up to the next president. 
 
 The White House swearing-in ceremony was a departure from recent history. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were both sworn in publicly at the Supreme Court. Former Justice John Paul Stevens has argued that holding the public ceremony at the court helps drive home the justice's independence from the White House. 
 
 Some interesting facts about Gorsuch and the court: 
 
 —He is the youngest nominee since Clarence Thomas, who was 43 when confirmed in 1991. 
 
 —The Colorado native went to high school in Washington while his mother served as EPA administrator in the Reagan administration. 
 
 —He's the sixth member of the court who attended Harvard Law School; the other three got their law degrees from Yale. 
 
 —Gorsuch credits a nun with teaching him how to write. He and his family attend an Episcopal church in Boulder, though he was raised Catholic and attended Catholic schools as a child. He joins a court that has five Catholics and three Jews. 
 
 —As an associate justice, Gorsuch will earn $251,800 a year — over 15 percent higher than his $217,600 salary as an appellate judge. 
 
 —Gorsuch joins the ranks of justices who are millionaires. He reported financial assets in 2015 worth at least $3.2 million, according to his latest financial disclosure report. 
 
 ___ 
 
 Associated Press writers Mark Sherman and Ken Thomas contributed to this report.
– Neil Gorsuch is now officially a member of the US Supreme Court, and the 49-year-old's impact is expected to be both immediate and long-lasting. Gorsuch officially gets to work on Monday, in time to hear important cases for the current term and to help weigh in on which cases will be heard in the next one. Here's a look: The court will hear a case April 19 that may be the most significant of the term, writes Lyle Denniston at Constitution Daily. In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, a Missouri church is suing for the right to use state funds to improve a kids' playground. It's seen as one of the biggest church-state cases in a while. Also on the court's radar are various challenges to President Trump's travel ban, reports ABC News in its Gorsuch primer. A preview at the BBC includes an upcoming gun rights case (Peruta v. San Diego) about people's rights to carry concealed weapons in public places. Gorsuch cannot vote on any cases argued before he became a justice, but if any of those cases end up 4-4, the court could order them re-argued before the full, nine-member panel, notes NBC News. At the Hill, Lydia Wheeler writes that Gorsuch may actually be more conservative than the late Antonin Scalia in some areas, particularly on what's known as the Chevron deference. It stems from a 1984 ruling in which the high court ordered lower courts "to defer to reasonable agency interpretations of ambiguous statutes," per an explainer at SCOTUSblog. In layman's terms, liberal groups fear that public health and safety laws enacted in the Obama era are at risk. The Gorsuch confirmation fight is destined to replayed again and again. This op-ed in the Washington Post thinks one thing that would help is a constitutional amendment limiting justices' terms to 18 years. See a video of Trump, Gorsuch, and Justice Anthony Kennedy (Gorsuch used to clerk for him) here via PBS. As the low man on the court's totem pole, Gorsuch has some kitchen responsibilities.