What Is Neil Gorsuch's Net Worth and Salary?
Neil Gorsuch is an American jurist who has a net worth of $8 million. When he first became a judge in 2006, Neil Gorsuch estimated his net worth to be $3 million. According to his most recent financial disclosure form, Gorsuch estimated his own net worth to be a minimum of $4 million and a maximum of $16 million. That makes him the second or third richest Supreme Court justice behind John Roberts, whose net worth range is $10-27 million. We say "second or third richest" because both Samuel Alito's and Amy Coney Barrett's given ranges are between $3-8 million. Elena Kagan's net worth estimate is between $2 and $4.3 million. Sonia Sotomayor's is between $1.5 and $6 million. Clarence Thomas' is between $865,000 and $2 million. Ketanji Brown Jackson's is between $150,000 and $650,000. Brett Kavanaugh is the least rich Supreme Court justice, with a net worth that at one time was pegged at $1 million but has actually sunk to under $1 million in his recent disclosures.
Neil Gorsuch is a justice on the Supreme Court of the United States. He was nominated by President Donald Trump and has served since 2017.
After attending Columbia University, Harvard Law School, and the University of Oxford, Neil worked in private practice and then as an associate attorney general at the United States Department of Justice until he was appointed to the Tenth Circuit United States Court of Appeals in 2006.
Salary
Prior to taking his first government job in 2005, Neil was earning $1 million per year in base salary as a private lawyer. As an appellate judge, his salary was $217,000. Gorsuch's salary as a Supreme Court justice is $251,800 per year. In 2023, he also earned $250,000 from book royalties.
Early Life
Neil Gorsuch was born on August 29, 1967, in Denver, Colorado. He is the son of Anne Buford and David Gorsuch, and he was raised with his two younger siblings. Both his parents were lawyers, and his mother served in the Colorado House of Representatives from 1976 to 1980. After she had completed her time in the House, the family moved to Bethesda, Maryland. There, Neil attended Georgetown Preparatory School. He then attended Columbia University and graduated in 1988 with a bachelor's degree in political science. He was a member of the Phi Gamma Delta fraternity and was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Gorsuch then attended Harvard Law School and was the editor of the "Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy." In 1991, he graduated with his J.D. He went on to serve as a law clerk for a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He then spent a year at Oxford as a Marshall Scholar before clerking for U.S. Supreme Court justices Byron White and Anthony Kennedy.
Career
After completing his clerkships, Gorsuch decided to join a boutique law firm called Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel. He focused on trial work and was an associate in Washington, D.C., from 1995 to 1997 and then was a partner from 1998 to 2005. During this time, he attended the University of Oxford, where he earned a Doctor of Philosophy in legal philosophy in 2004.
Beginning in June 2005, Gorsuch served as Principal Deputy to the Associate Attorney General, Robert McCallum, at the United States Department of Justice. He remained in this role until July 2006. While in this role, Neil was tasked with all of the litigation that arose from the War on Terror. He also helped Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prepare for hearings after the public revelation of NSA warrantless surveillance.
In May 2006, President George W. Bush nominated Gorsuch to the seat of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He was confirmed by a unanimous voice vote in the U.S. Senate in July 2006. During his decade-long tenure at the Tenth Circuit, Gorsuch had advocated for a broad definition of religious freedom. He has also been an opponent of the dormant Commerce Clause, which allows state laws to be declared unconstitutional if they too greatly burden interstate commerce. Neil also favors a strict reading of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and supports the death penalty. He wrote his first opinion for the Tenth Circuit in 2008 and his last in 2016. In total, he authored 212 published opinions for the Tenth Circuit.
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During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, candidate Donald Trump included Gorsuch in a list of 21 judges whom he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court if elected. After Trump took office in January 2017, Gorsuch was considered one of the top contenders for the vacant court seat that was open following the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. By the end of the month, Trump announced his nomination of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court. At the time, he was 49 years old, making him the youngest nominee to the Supreme Court since the 1991 nomination of Clarence Thomas, who had been 43. In April, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved his nomination with a party-line vote. A few days later, the Senate confirmed his nomination to the Supreme Court by a 54-45 vote, with three Democrats joining the entirety of Senate Republicans in voting to approve him.
Gorsuch wrote his first U.S. Supreme Court decision for a unanimous court in "Henson v. Santander Consumer USA Inc." During his time with the Court since then, he has written the majority opinion in landmark cases like "Bostock v. Clayton County" on LGBT rights, "McGirt v. Oklahoma" on Native American law, "Kennedy v. Bremerton School District" on personal religious observance, "303 Creative LLC v. Elenis" on free speech, and "Ramos v. Louisiana" on juries' guilty verdicts.
In terms of legal philosophy, Gorsuch is a proponent of originalism, which is the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted as it was intended at the time of enactment. He is also a proponent of textualism, the idea that statutes should be interpreted literally without considering legislative history or the underlying purpose or intent of the law.
Personal Life
Gorsuch married his wife, Marie Louise, in 1996. She was a champion equestrienne on Oxford's riding team. The two married at St. Nicholas' Anglican Church in Henley-on-Thames. They have two daughters together and reside in Boulder, Colorado. Neil enjoys fly fishing and spending time in the outdoors. He raises horses, chickens, and goats with his family in Colorado. Gorsuch was the first member of a mainline Protestant denomination to sit on the Supreme Court since the retirement of John Paul Stevens in 2010. He was raised Catholic but later began attending St. John's Episcopal Church in Boulder, Colorado.
