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A former student of Neil Gorsuch, President Doanld Trump's pick for the Supreme Court, said the judge told a class of law students that women "used their companies for maternity benefits."

In a letter to sent Friday to the Senate, Jennifer Sisk, a 2016 graduate of the University of Colorado Law School, said that in a class last year, Gorsuch implied that women swindle companies like law firms to get maternity benefits. He also urged his students to question women in interviews about their plans for having kids.

"He asked the class to raise their hands if they knew of a female who had used a company to get maternity benefits and then left right after having a baby," Sisk wrote in the letter. "He then announced that all our hands should be raised because 'many' women use their companies for maternity benefits and then leave the company after the baby is born."

According to Sisk, Gorsuch went on to say that "companies must ask females about their family and pregnancy plans to protect the company." It is illegal for companies to make hiring decisions on the basis of pregnancy or family plans.



Sisk told NPR that she sent the letter "so that the proper questions could be asked during his confirmation hearings." Gorsuch's hearings are set to begin Monday.

Nominated to fill Justice Antonin Scalia's empty seat, Gorsuch is seen as a younger, more conservative Scalia. In one of his most famous decisions, he sided with Hobby Lobby, ruling that the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers pay for birth control coverage was unconstitutional. That decision was later upheld by the Supreme Court.

Despite these charges, Sisk says she supports Gorsuch for the highest court: She wrote on Facebook in January that "he's still better than the rest of the choices."

Update 3/20, 1:30 p.m.: In a separate letter, another former student said Sisk's account mischaracterized Gorsuch's statements. Will Hauptman, a J.D. candidate at the University of Colorado Law School, wrote that "had Judge Gorsuch truly made the statements described in the letter, I would remember — the statements would have greatly upset me."



Update 3/22, 9:45 a.m.: Gorsuch denied Sisk's version of events in his Tuesday confirmation hearing. The discussion he led, he told senators, was on what a young female lawyer should say in a job interview if she's planning to get pregnant soon.

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Rebecca Nelson Rebecca Nelson is a magazine writer in New York.

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