Welcome to Gavel Drop, our roundup of legal news, headlines, and head-shaking moments in the courts.

In the New York Times, Paula Span asks whether it matters that U.S. Supreme Court nominee Judge Neil Gorsuch opposes “aid in dying,” since the issue is not likely to end up before the Court anyway.

University of California at Irvine Professor Rick Hasen writes that Gorsuch will lead the Supreme Court in the wrong direction. But I thought he was such a nice guy?

In a guest column in Colorado’s Aurora Sentinel, Dr. Jennifer Hyer explains how Neil Gorsuch is a threat to reproductive rights and to her ability to practice medicine.

A rural county in Nebraska is facing bankruptcy because it can’t afford to pay a $28.1 million judgment to six people who spent decades in prison before DNA evidence exonerated them of a 1985 rape and murder.

Now that President Donald Trump has decided to stick it to trans kids, a group of Texas-led states that also wanted to stick it to trans kids have dropped a lawsuit challenging Obama-era protection for transgender students.

The White House is vetting Judge Amul Thapar for a seat on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. He’s a strict constructionist when it comes to interpreting the U.S. Constitution, which means he’s basically a Scalia clone.

The Kansas Supreme Court ruled that the state failed to ensure adequate funding for public schools. Great job, Kansas.

A class action lawsuit on behalf of 62,000 detainees alleges that immigrants held in a detention center in Aurora, Colorado, were required to work for a dollar per day and were threatened with solitary confinement if they refused.

First Liberty Institute, a Plano, Texas-based nonprofit law firm that says it’s committed to religious freedom, sent a letter to Trump championing three ultraconservative Texas judges for the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

A couple of Christian bakers who cited “religious freedom” as the reason they refused to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple are appealing their case to the Oregon Court of Appeals.

Fear of deportation is causing some witnesses of violent crimes to skip their court dates, resulting in charges being dropped against several suspects who could be released to potentially commit more crimes. So much for the “law and order” president.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee announced that it won’t recall Attorney General Jeff Sessions to testify about his failure to disclose his contacts with Russia during the election. Surprise.