Confronted by Freezing Trucker Case, Gorsuch Pushes Back: I'm Not A Legislator
Confronted again with the case of Alphonse Maddin — the TransAm Trucking driver who was fired for leaving a trailer with frozen breaks, against his employers wishes, because he said he was losing feeling in his limbs in the subzero temperatures — Gorsuch insisted that he believed it was the right legal decision to side with the employer in the matter.
“This is one of those you take home at night. The law said, the man is protected and can’t be fired if he refuses to operate an unsafe vehicle. The facts of the case, at least as I understood them, was that Mr. Maddin chose to operate his vehicle, to drive away, and therefore wasn’t protected by the law,” Gorsuch said halfway through a ten-hour marathon questioning session.
Gorsuch’s dissent on the case — after his colleagues insisted the law protected him — has come up repeatedly during his confirmation hearing, with Democrats criticizing him for siding with employers over “the little guy,” as one senator put it on Tuesday.
“My job is to apply the law that you write. The law as written said he would be protected if he refused to operate. By any plain understanding, he operated the vehicle,” Gorsuch continued. “I said it was an unkind decision, I said it might have been a wrong decision, a bad decision, but my job isn’t to write the law, senator, it’s to apply the law. If congress passes a law saying the trucker in those circumstances gets to choose how to operate his vehicle, I’ll be the first in line to enforce it. “