Gorsuch hasn’t been a household name in the nation’s capital for more than 30 years, not since the late Anne Gorsuch Burford stood at the center of the worst scandal in the history of the Environmental Protection Agency.

Now her son, appellate Judge Neil Gorsuch, is President Donald Trump’s choice to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Burford, known as Anne Gorsuch until she remarried in 1983, was among a band of allies of arch-conservative Colorado brewery magnate Joseph Coors who were swept into senior government jobs under Republican President Ronald Reagan. An attorney and former Colorado state legislator, Gorsuch was known for an anti-regulatory bent.

Her stewardship as EPA administrator was marked by a string of revelations of cozy ties with chemical companies and attempts to purge the agency of scientists and enforcement staffers tasked with minimizing the presence of toxins in the air and water.
 
Headlines about the scandal dominated the news for months.