WASHINGTON – Neil Gorsuch’s first six months on the U.S. Supreme Court indicate he is already creating sharply divided opinions about his performance.

Gorsuch was appointed to the Supreme Court in April after serving for 11 years as a federal judge in Denver.

Most of the time in Washington he has continued the staunchly conservative record he established in Colorado. Other times, he has been unpredictable and potentially divisive, according to legal experts.

“Justice Gorsuch shifted the Court to a conservative majority,” Caroline Fredrickson, president of the American Constitution Society, a nonprofit civil liberties organization, told Colorado Politics.

She added that he “may be to the right of the Republican-appointed majority.”

This week, the nonprofit legal advocacy group Free Speech For People urged the Supreme Court to reprimand Gorsuch for a Sept. 28 speech at Trump International Hotel in downtown Washington, D.C.

A statement from the group said Gorsuch created “ethical conflicts” during the luncheon speech by creating the image he endorsed President Donald Trump.

Last week, as the Supreme Court reconvened for its latest session, Gorsuch appeared to lecture the other justices with a sarcastic remark. During a hearing in a gerrymandering case, he said, “Maybe we can just for a second talk about the arcane matter of the Constitution.”

But that suited Colorado U.S. Rep. Ken Buck, R-Greeley, just fine.

“From his time on the Court of Appeals in Denver to his first few months on the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Gorsuch has shown again and again his faithfulness to the Constitution and the original intent of the law,” said Buck, a member of the House Judiciary Committee.

However, in the case of Ronald Class, a retiree who illegally parked his car in a U.S. Capitol lot while it was packed with loaded weapons, Gorsuch seemed to depart from his conservative stances.

Class owned a concealed weapons permit but he was arrested under a federal law that bans guns on Capitol grounds.

Class told FBI agents he was a “constitutional bounty hunter” and a “private attorney general.” He said he traveled with guns to enforce criminal laws against judges who act illegally.

Class pleaded guilty in a plea bargain that would give him 24 days in jail and year of supervised release. He later tried to retract his guilty plea.

He presented several arguments for retraction, one of which claimed he had a Second Amendment right to carry arms to the Capitol.

Class lost on appeal after acknowledging he understood the plea bargain before agreeing to it. At the Supreme Court, his attorney argued that previous court rulings show defendants have rights to raise constitutional objections even after pleading guilty.

A Justice Department attorney argued defendants should not be allowed to plead guilty knowing they could retract the plea later.

Gorsuch said that some defendants admit facts when they plead guilty but not that they know they committed a crime.

“You’re admitting to what’s in the indictment,” Gorsuch said. “Isn’t that maybe the most natural and historically consistent understanding of what a guilty plea is?”

In a separate case last week, Gorsuch questioned whether courts can constitutionally enforce federal laws that are not clearly written and defined.

The case involved a permanent resident from the Philippines convicted of burglary. He argued the law authorizing deportation for violent crimes was too unconstitutionally vague to be enforced against him.

Gorsuch seemed to agree when he said that for laws to be enforced, Congress must clearly specify “when it’s going to put people in prison and deprive them of liberty and result in deportation.”

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This story is based in part on wire services reports.