On January 31, 2017, soon after taking office, President Donald Trump, a Republican, nominated Neil Gorsuch for Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States to succeed Antonin Scalia, who had died almost one year earlier.

Majority leader Mitch McConnell declared that as the presidential election cycle had already commenced, it made the appointment of the next justice a political issue to be decided by voters.

The Senate Judiciary Committee refused to consider the Garland nomination, thus keeping the vacancy open through the end of Obama's presidency on January 20, 2017.

When nominated, Gorsuch was a sitting judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, a position to which he had been appointed by President George W. Bush in 2006.

[16] After winning the presidential election, Trump and White House Counsel Don McGahn interviewed four individuals for the Supreme Court opening, all of whom had appeared on one of the two previously-released lists.

[22] According to The Washington Post, Trump considered rescinding Gorsuch's nomination, venting angrily to advisers after his Supreme Court pick was critical of the president's escalating attacks on the federal judiciary in a private February meeting with Democratic legislators.

[23] Norm Eisen, Special Counsel for Ethics and Government Reform in the White House and Ambassador to the Czech Republic, endorsed Gorsuch.

PolitiFact called her statement misleading and said that Gorsuch's past rulings do not "demonstrate that he thinks more felons should be allowed guns than what is already permitted under the law".

[33] The Judicial Crisis Network enthusiastically rallied behind Gorsuch after running a campaign against Merrick Garland, spending a total of $17 million to these ends.

[8][37] On the first day of hearings, March 20, senators largely used their opening statements to criticize each other, with Ranking Democrat Dianne Feinstein complaining of the "unprecedented treatment" of Judge Merrick Garland, while Democrat Michael Bennet felt "two wrongs don't make a right", with Republican Ted Cruz insisting President Trump's nomination now carried "super-legitimacy".

[38] Durbin also criticized the accuracy of his opinion in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case, where Gorsuch contended that contraception "destroys a fertilized egg," and that he had held the Religious Freedom Restoration Act included protection for corporations, rather than just individuals.

[40] Democrat Patrick Leahy used his time to criticize Republicans' obstructions of the Garland nomination, disparage the policies of President George W. Bush that Gorsuch had defended at the Justice Department, and to ask Gorsuch how he would rule in Washington v. Trump, a pending case concerning the legality of Trump's Executive Order 13769, colloquially referred to as the "Muslim Ban."

Republican Orrin Hatch asked Gorsuch if he thought his writings reflected "a knee-jerk attitude against common-sense regulations", to which the judge replied "no".

[42] Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse spent the bulk of his allotted time describing to Gorsuch the negative effects of "Dark money" contributed by unknown donors.

[44] Still, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer said this demonstrated "a continued, troubling pattern of Judge Gorsuch deciding against everyday Americans, even children who require special assistance at school".

"[48] Noah Feldman, a Harvard Law professor, thought that Gorsuch had committed "minor plagiarism", that deserved "no more punishment than the embarrassment attendant on its revelation".

The last time the committee's vote to approve a Supreme Court nominee split precisely along party lines was in 2006 on the Samuel Alito nomination.

[54] The nuclear option was used in 2013 by then-Majority Leader Harry Reid to abolish filibusters for all presidential appointments except nominations to the Supreme Court.

[56][57] In addition, Democrats Al Franken, Elizabeth Warren, and Kamala Harris, along with Independent Bernie Sanders each criticized various aspects of Gorsuch's record.

In response, Republicans invoked the nuclear option and changed the Senate rules to end filibusters for Supreme Court nominees.