President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit on May 10, 2006, to replace Judge David M. Ebel, who achieved senior status that same year.

[6] During his tenure on the Supreme Court he has written the majority opinion in landmark cases such as Bostock v. Clayton County on LGBT rights, McGirt v. Oklahoma on Native American law, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District on personal religious observance while serving in an official capacity, and Ramos v. Louisiana on juries' guilty verdicts.

Gorsuch was a member of Georgetown Prep's debate, forensics, and international relations clubs,[19] and served as a United States Senate page in the early 1980s.

[40] On May 10, 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to the seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit vacated by Judge David M. Ebel, who was taking senior status.

[60] When a panel of the court denied similar claims under the same act in Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Burwell (2015), Gorsuch joined Judges Harris Hartz, Paul Joseph Kelly Jr., Timothy Tymkovich, and Jerome Holmes in their dissent to the denial of rehearing en banc.

[77] He added a concurrence noting that although the standard of review of campaign finance in the United States is unclear, the Colorado law would fail even under intermediate scrutiny.

[81] Gorsuch wrote a four-page dissent, arguing that the New Mexico Court of Appeals had "long ago alerted law enforcement" that the statute that the officer relied upon for the child's arrest does not criminalize noises or diversions that merely disturb order in a classroom.

[71] In 2015, Gorsuch wrote a dissent to the denial of rehearing en banc when the Tenth Circuit found that a convicted sex offender had to register with Kansas after he moved to the Philippines.

[88][89] After the state's unsuccessful execution of Clayton Lockett, Gorsuch joined Briscoe when the court unanimously allowed Pruitt to continue using the same lethal injection protocol.

[96] It was reported by the Associated Press that, as a courtesy, Gorsuch's first call after the nomination was to President Obama's pick for the same position, Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

[117][118] Gorsuch joined the majority in National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra and Janus v. AFSCME, which both held unconstitutional certain forms of compelled speech.

[125][126] Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh dissented from the decision, arguing that it improperly extended the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

[127] In October 2020, Gorsuch agreed with the justices in an "apparently unanimous" decision to deny an appeal from Kim Davis, a county clerk who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

[129] Gorsuch and Thomas joined Alito's concurrence, which argued for reconsidering, possibly overturning, Employment Division v. Smith, "an important precedent limiting First Amendment protections for religious practices.

[131][132][133] In November 2021, Gorsuch dissented from the Court's 6–3 decision to reject an appeal from Mercy San Juan Medical Center, a hospital affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, which had sought to deny a hysterectomy to a transgender patient on religious grounds.

[135][136] In November 2023, Gorsuch voted with the 6–3 majority to decline to hear a case against Washington State's ban on conversion therapy for minors, allowing the law to stand; Kavanaugh, Thomas, and Alito dissented.

[137][138] Gorsuch joined Thomas's dissent from denial of certiorari in Peruta v. San Diego County, in which the Ninth Circuit had upheld California's restrictive concealed carry laws.

[140][141] In Sessions v. Dimaya (2018), the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 to uphold the Ninth Circuit's decision that the residual clause in the Immigration and Nationality Act was unconstitutionally vague.

[143][144] In December 2018, Gorsuch dissented when the Court voted against hearing cases brought by the states of Louisiana and Kansas to deny Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood.

[149][150] In September 2021, the Supreme Court declined a petition to block a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks; the vote was 5–4 with Gorsuch in the majority, joined by Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Barrett.

[151] In June 2022, Gorsuch was among the five justices who formed the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which ruled there is no constitutional right to abortion, overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v.

[160] The landmark decision in the affirmative, written by Gorsuch, found that "For Major Crimes Act purposes, land reserved for the Creek Nation since the 19th century remains 'Indian country.

"[169] On November 26, 2020, Gorsuch joined the majority opinion in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo, which struck down COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the state of New York on houses of worship.

His statement criticized many of the restrictions the government had imposed since the pandemic started and said, "Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.

[172] In January 2019, Bonnie Kristian of The Week wrote that an "unexpected civil libertarian alliance" was developing between Gorsuch and Sotomayor "in defense of robust due process rights and skepticism of law enforcement overreach.

[177] In a 2005 National Review article, Gorsuch argued that "American liberals have become addicted to the courtroom, relying on judges and lawyers rather than elected leaders and the ballot box, as the primary means of effecting their social agenda" and that they are "failing to reach out and persuade the public".

He wrote that, in doing so, American liberals are circumventing the democratic process on issues like gay marriage, school vouchers, and assisted suicide, and this has led to a compromised judiciary, which is no longer independent.

[184][185] This was exemplified in his majority opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), which ruled that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 grants protection from employment discrimination due to sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2017, after his announcement as a Supreme Court nominee, the New York Times reported that Gorsuch owned a timeshare outside Granby, Colorado, with associates of Philip Anschutz, that was later sold the same year.

[40] Reporting from Politico in April 2023 revealed that Gorsuch had sold the cabin to Brian Duffy, the CEO of the law firm Greenberg Traurig, which litigates cases before the Supreme Court, but failed to disclose the purchaser's identity on his federal disclosure forms.