NPR’s Nina Totenberg has a long look at whether the Supreme Court justices get along as swimmingly as each of them claims in their off-the-court public appearances (spoiler: no) that has a few interesting little details, but probably most boils down to “Neil Gorsuch is insufferable, and nobody likes him.” Or something to that effect.

But the real breaking news is the reason Justice Sonia Sotomayor was phoning into oral arguments from her office rather than sitting on the bench with the other eight justices, Turns out it’s because Neil Gorsuch is an utter and complete lowlife. Not just insufferable, but a mean, malevolent asshole.

Sotomayor has diabetes, a significant risk factor if she were to catch COVID-19. With that risk factor, Totenberg reports that she “didn’t feel safe” sitting alongside unmasked fellow justices, so Chief Justice John Roberts asked the other justices to wear masks to the proceedings. They all agreed, except one: Neil Gorsuch, who sits next to Sotomayor on the bench, refused.

That’s what led to the spectacle earlier this month of seven masked justices, one unmasked justice, and Sotomayor calling in remotely from her office. It’s because she and the Chief Justice asked Gorsuch to cover his faceholes as precaution against possibly killing one of the court’s remaining liberal justices, and Gorsuch told them both to pound sand.

The reason for Gorsuch’s refusal is not reported, but there is only one reason to refuse to wear a mask when an at-risk friend or coworker asks you to. It can only be intentional cruelty. It’s either that, or Neil Gorsuch was traumatized in childhood when he was attacked by a roving pack of 30 to 50 feral N95 face masks, and that one seems a lot less likely.

This is apparently going to continue, as well. Sotomayor will continue attending arguments remotely this week, so we can assume that Gorsuch is continuing his refusals. This, despite Gorsuch’s previous life as a public scold who preened about how everyone else needs to be more civil to each other.

Okay, so he’s genuinely a garbage human being. Got it. That’s not terribly surprising, given that he was willing to make his way onto the court after the way was cleared for him by Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow the nation’s first Black president to appoint anyone to the court during the last year-plus of his administration, and his willingness to shake the hand of a longtime grifting sleazebag, soon-to-be traitorous Donald Trump, and a casual perusal of any of the man’s alleged thought processes as he explains, from the bench or in writing, how Americans have too many rights these days and need to be more subservient to their God-fearing and profiteering betters. But he’s willing to get his hands even dirtier than that: If he’s the only thing standing between one or several of the liberal justices taking their seats for oral arguments, then he’s going to do that.

It’s so unbelievably petty that it’s hard to imagine any of his workplace associates ever liking the man again. Gross.

Given that Gorsuch is part of the “pro-life” wing of Republicanism, that special class of people makes a special point of killing as many Americans as possible under the general banner of sucks to be you, we should at least be you consider a more remote possibility for his behavior. Perhaps it isn’t that Gorsuch is trying to make a Fox News political point by refusing to mask up in the presence of people whose lives would be in serious danger if they were exposed to COVID. Perhaps he’s doing it as a personal attack on Sotomayor or others.

So long as he refuses to mask, Sotomayor will have reduced participation in oral arguments. Is that his intent? So long as he refuses to mask, his fellow justices—some of whom he appears to have genuine contempt for—will be exposed to a risk of illness that they would otherwise not have to face.

Is that his intent?

We might as well ask the question, because if the pandemic has demonstrated anything it is that Republicanism has genuine, outright contempt for human life. Not in theory, but in practice. The Trump White House was slow to respond to the crisis in part, according to later reporting, because the pandemic initially was severe only in Democratic cities that the administration’s strategists didn’t care about. Pandemic safety measures have repeatedly been belittled, dismissed, and outright thwarted by the Tucker Carlson, Ron DeSantis wing of the party, a wing that made “wear a mask during a life-threatening pandemic” into a new culture war—a culture war with a national death toll now approaching one million people.

It’s not rude in the slightest to ask if a Republican hardliner is intentionally looking to expose others to a deadly disease, because that is exactly what the party’s leaders have been attempting to do this whole time. It’s a damn cult.

In any event, let’s have a round of applause for Neil Gorsuch, literally, the worst person conservatism could find until they happened upon Justice Blackout Drunk. Gorsuch’s refusal to wear a mask means that the person who has to sit immediately next to him has to accept increased odds of death to do her job, and Gorsuch and the court’s other conservatives have already issued opinions stating that workers and employers have the right to do exactly that, rather than participating in any of the emergency safety precautions that the rest of the nation is trying to adhere to.

Only Gorsuch, however, has enough contempt for his fellow justices that he won’t even wear a mask when asked. Truly, the prima donna of assholes.