To the ire of plenty conservatives, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority decision deeming sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. While many disputed the merits of Gorsuch’s argumentation, a vocal strain of criticism came from consequentialists lamenting the outcome of the ruling. President Trump’s reelection odds, they asserted, took a fateful blow because he could no longer run on his judicial appointments.
Trump is the underdog of the 2020 race, but let’s be clear: If he loses come November, it absolutely will not be because of Gorsuch.
For starters, some 30 million Americans that were employed three months ago are currently jobless. Another 100,000 are dead due to a disastrous breakdown of government policy from the White House to city councils. No single factor likely cost the lives of more people than the Trump administration’s initial guidance against wearing masks.
In 2016, though historically unpopular, Trump had the pleasure of drawing an opponent who was also one of the most unpopular presidential candidates in history. It’s easy to overcome a majority of the nation disliking you on a personal level when even more are personally benefiting from your policies, as they were at the start of 2020. It’s next to impossible during a pandemic and a deep economic downturn. Add in the fact that Trump is running against a more popular Democratic candidate in Joe Biden than he was in Hillary Clinton, and it seems downright insurmountable.
This perfect storm of crises doesn’t mean that other factors can’t help or harm Trump’s reelection. After all, the recent protests and riots responding to the police killing of George Floyd will probably impact Democratic turnout in November even though that has nothing to do with the economy. But a national conversation about racism and police brutality is a far wider-ranging one than a fairly complex Supreme Court ruling that likely won’t have much impact in practice due to state anti-discrimination laws.
Even though the dissent may be correct in its reasoning, a thin minority of people understand or follow Supreme Court jurisprudence. For those that care about the outcome, they likely largely agree with it. A majority of people polled by YouGov support a law prohibiting hiring discrimination against transgender people, with just a quarter of Republicans opposing it. Further, more than 4 in 5 Democrats and 3 in 5 Republicans think that the average employer should not be able to fire an employee for being gay.
Obviously, the Supreme Court is not a legislative body, but again, few people outside of the legal profession and the commentariat will make that distinction. Sure, Trump may lose some high-dollar donors and a few stalwart social conservatives in deep-red states. But if older voters and suburban women in swing states fail to vote for Trump, it certainly won’t be because of a Supreme Court ruling decided upon five months before the election. If Trump loses in 2020, it’ll be his own fault, not Gorsuch’s.
