Writer: Gorsuch Consistent On Religious Liberty

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Tim Carney, from the Washington Examiner, defended Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch from criticism emanating from the left. He tells Chris Stigall on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that he has applied religious liberty equally, no matter who has appeared before him.

"One of the cases they cue in on, that critics focus on, is Hobby Lobby, where he ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby and against the administration trying to force Hobby Lobby to pay for the contraception for employees. This is a religious liberty case. For the left, it's about denying birth control to women or whatever, but I dug up two other cases that I thought were telling because they were also religious liberty cases but they didn't have anything to do with rich, white Christians or denying women birth control, they had to do with a murderer and a rapist, who is a Native American and a Muslim, who were in prison and Gorsuch took their side in religious liberty cases because that's what the law said to do."

Carney insisted that Gorsuch read the law as it was written and made his rulings accordingly.

"He read the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, he read the related act regarding federal institutions, or people who are in state prison and he applied it. He applied it whether you were a rich, Christian business owner or you were a Native American convicted of murder."

He said critics deliberately misunderstand what the roles of a judge should be.

"Maybe the liberals who were attacking him on it, it's because they don't see the judge's role that way. They imagine that ever judge is just implementing policy, that judge is, like, a super law maker and so, they assume that when he ruled that way in Hobby Lobby that he was passing a law against subsidized birth control."