President Donald Trump has nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch, of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, to the Supreme Court. There have been conflicting reports about how Democrats will respond. Some have suggested that Senate Democrats will keep their powder dry for a more pivotal appointment, while others have claimed that they are determined to filibuster the nomination. The latter is the more likely scenario; Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Tuesday night said the Senate “must insist upon 60 votes for any Supreme Court nominee, a bar that was met by each of President Obama’s nominees.”

If the question is what Senate Democrats should do, though, there is little question: Just say no. If Senate Republicans want Gorsuch, they should have to eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations. There are compelling reasons, both general and specific to this nominee, why Senate Democrats should go to the mat.

The first, most obvious reason was that this Supreme Court seat was essentially stolen. After the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Senate Republicans created a new precedent holding that a president could not fill a vacancy with nearly a year remaining in a term. The people, the theory of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his colleagues went, should be allowed to decide.

This new precedent is intolerable on a number of levels, not least of which is that the people decided when they elected Barack Obama to a second term. But it becomes pure gall when you consider that Republicans in 2016 benefited twice over from some of the least democratic features of the American system—first, getting a narrow majority in a grossly malapportioned Senate, and then being awarded the presidency by the Electoral College despite losing the popular vote by nearly three million ballots.

It was within the formal powers of the Senate to preemptively reject any Obama nominee in 2016, and Trump is formally entitled to the presidency and its nomination powers. But Democrats are certainly under no obligation to pretend that his presidency or the Supreme Court vacancy he has to fill are in any other sense legitimate. It is true that the filibuster of a Supreme Court nomination is highly unusual—it has happened only once before, when LBJ’s nomination of Abe Fortas to replace departing Chief Justice Earl Warren was filibustered (ultimately handing Richard Nixon two Supreme Court vacancies when Fortas was later forced to resign). But these are highly atypical circumstances that call for an unusual reaction. Any Trump nomination that wasn’t Merrick Garland should have been preemptively filibustered.