Mask dispute among judges
Trump favorite divides Supreme Court
1/19/2022 3:34 am
Posse at the US Supreme Court: The Supreme Court chief asks his colleagues to wear a mask in the courtroom. All judges follow the call – except for one. Trump-nominated Neil Gorsuch appears at a hearing as the only one without a face mask.
US chief justices are reportedly arguing about wearing masks in the courtroom. National Public Radio (NPR) reported Tuesday, citing court sources, that Supreme Court Chief John Roberts had asked his peers to wear masks because of the coronavirus pandemic. Conservative judge Neil Gorsuch rejected it.
NPR had reported that Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who has diabetes, “doesn’t feel safe around people who are unmasked.” Roberts therefore asked his colleagues to take this into account, and with the exception of Gorsuch, all other judges followed suit at the most recent hearing last Tuesday. Gorsuch, 54, was nominated for office by former Republican President Donald Trump.
Sotomayor, 67, who sits next to Gorsuch on the bench, attended the court’s recent hearings online from her office. NPR reported that she also attended the judges’ weekly conferences over the phone rather than in person.
Wearing masks, like vaccination, has become a political issue in the United States. Gorsuch was one of six conservative Supreme Court justices who last week overturned Democrat Joe Biden’s government’s proposed vaccination requirement for large corporations. Sotomayor and the other two liberal judges, on the other hand, voted for compulsory vaccination and testing.
Following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States in March 2020, the Supreme Court began holding its hearings over the phone. In October, the judges, now all vaccinated and boosted, resumed in-person hearings.