Gorsuch sides with liberal Supreme Court justices in striking down 'vague' federal gun law

In a surprising turn of events, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch sided with the more liberal and centrist justices in striking down a federal law on guns and violent crimes as being overly “vague.”

The law was challenged by Maurice Davis and Andre Glover, both of whom were convicted on that law as well on felony robbery charges. While the robbery conviction stands, five justices agreed with Davis and Glover’s case against the federal law — which called for severe mandatory minimum sentences for a “crime of violence.” Between the federal law and the robbery charges, Davis was sentenced to more than 50 years in prison. Glover, meanwhile, was sentenced to 41 years.

Writing the majority opinion in the Court’s 5-4 ruling against the federal law, Gorsuch asserted, “In our constitutional order, a vague law is no law at all. Only the people’s elected representatives in Congress have the power to write new federal criminal laws. And when Congress exercises that power, it has to write statutes that given ordinary people fair warning about what the law demands of them.”

According to Gorsuch, the federal law David and Glover challenged “provides no reliable way to determine which offenses qualify as crimes of violence and thus, is unconstitutional.”

The justices who sided with Gorsuch in the 5-4 ruling were Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, while the four dissenters were Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.

Gorsuch and Kavanaugh are the two High Court justices who President Donald Trump has appointed so far. But Kavanaugh expressed his disagreement with Gorsuch, writing, “A decision to strike down a 33-year-old, often-prosecuted federal criminal law because it is all of a sudden unconstitutionally vague is an extraordinary event in this court.”