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Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch is sounding the alarm on the steep decline in civic literacy in classrooms across the United States — a trend Gorsuch said ultimately prompted him to co-author a new children’s book with the aim of educating the next generation about America’s founding principles.
Speaking to Digital in a recent interview, Gorsuch said his new book, “Heroes of 1776: The Story of the Declaration,” was created to address the steep decline in civic education and history in the U.S. among both school-aged children and adults.
“Only about 13% of kids today in eighth grade are proficient in American history — [and just] 22% in civics,” Gorsuch told Digital. “Six out of 10 adults would fail our citizenship test.
Those numbers, he said, reflect a “deeply” concerning reality and were ultimately what inspired the book’s creation.
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Supreme Court justices pose for their official portrait in the East Conference Room of the Supreme Court building in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 7, 2022. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)
“That’s how [my co-author] hooked me,” Gorsuch said, referring to Janie Nitze, his former clerk and co-author.
“She says, ‘You have been complaining about the state of civic education in this country for a long time,'” Gorsuch said. “She’s right. … So, it’s time to do something about it, I figured.”
Gorsuch has long sought to improve the state of civic education programs for young people in the U.S. — a goal that predates his nomination as a Supreme Court justice.
He recently told Sunday that the new book took “a lot of inspiration” from former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who famously founded a civics education nonprofit after stepping down from the bench.
“As she was leaving the court, she reflected that civic education in this country is a problem,” Gorsuch said of O’Connor’s work. “And for a lot of reasons, it’s simply not being taught anymore.”
“So I do think we have a big problem, because we are a creedal nation, again, not based on race or religion, but based on an idea, three great ideas, I think,” he said. “And if you don’t know what they are, the history and the people that made them possible, how can you possibly carry them on?”
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Members of the Supreme Court attend President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress in 2024. (Shawn Thew-Pool/Getty Images)
Gorsuch noted in 2019 that just one-third of Americans could name all three branches of government — a concerning decline, he said, given that the three branches interact and crucially “check” one another against unmitigated overreach.
Without this separation of powers, Gorsuch said at the time, promises of freedom “are just words on a page.”
“What Madison knew is that people are not angels,” he told Fox & Friends. “And that we need to separate powers that keep us free.”
Now, he’s hoping to bring that message to a younger audience.
Gorsuch said their goal in writing the book — which features striking, hand-painted illustrations alongside stories of well-known revolutionaries and young people during the Revolutionary War — was to inspire children by highlighting the role they played in shaping the nation, 250 years ago.
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U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch speaks at the Reagan Library on May 5, 2026, in Simi Valley, Calif. (Getty Images)
“Young people have been remarkable contributors to our country throughout history,” Gorsuch said, listing teenagers named in the book, who participated in the war directly, or as spies.
“We wanted to inspire young people. That was a huge part of it,” Gorsuch said.
He stressed that civic education is not a partisan issue on the high court — adding that in fact, the issue is one that unifies all nine Supreme Court justices, regardless of their ideology.
“If you polled the nine of us in our conference room,” Gorsuch said of the justices, “one thing we could all agree on is the importance of learning American history.”
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“Because how else are you going to carry this thing forward? Somebody has to run the zoo,” he said.
