Sotomayor | Obama’s Pick For Supreme Court Justice

Sotomayor choice blasted by conservatives

Judge Sonia Sotomayor could go all the way to the Supreme Court. But this time, it isn’t because one of her decisions is being overturned by the conservative justices. And it isn’t because she was involved in a ruling on consumer finance products like installment loans or quick cash loans. President Obama has named Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Kris Alingod reports for All Headline News that Sonia Sotomayor is the president’s pick to fill the soon-to-be-vacant slot that retiring Justice David Souter will leave. Sotomayor must still receive Senate approval, but sweet sassy mollassy, is Fox News already up in arms. It’s no surprise. Griping over the liberal wave is all that keeps them from drowning.

Sonia Sotomayor: the empathy judge?

This is President Obama’s first appointment to the Supreme Court, one that he has come by after due consultation with bipartisan lawmakers. Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) were in the committee. Justice Souter is retiring in the summer of 2009, so the time is now to seek confirmation. The court’s next term begins October 5. Will the Senate (which is predominantly liberal) confirm Obama’s choice of Sotomayor?

But the lingering question Senate leaders had after their meeting with Obama is his use of the word “empathy.” It’s what he wants in a candidate, which could mean that he was reaching for a female, minority viewpoint. I’d like to think Supreme Court picks are based solely on qualifications. Of course, the bias the political party in power wishes to exploit is a consideration, but pandering is unbecoming. Senator McConnell worried about the implications “empathy” would have regarding bias:

Empathy implied that you were on somebody’s side before you heard the case. We did have a discussion about the importance of following the law and not acting like a legislator on the bench… if I were making this nomination, empathy would not be a word that I would have chosen.

Having said that, the President gets to make the nomination and we’ll make our judgment based on the nominee’s record.

Justice David Souter

The American people could ask for nothing more from its elected officials. Consider the record and vote accordingly. Similarly, if the citizenry would consider the record quick cash loans have on temporary financial well-being, I’d hope they’d base their voting positions on the hard data, rather than unsubstantiated anecdotes from media scare stories. They’d see that installment loans have a sterling record for helping responsible consumers.

Making the American people “proud”

That’s what Senator Sessions hopes the Senate will achieve in their evaluation of Sotomayor. When Obama was a senator, he voted against G.W. Bush Supreme Court appointees Alito and Roberts, Sessions said. However, Obama gave thoughtful reasons for his objections. Sessions praised Justice Souter for giving notice early enough in the season for President Obama and the Senate to go through an even-handed, unhurried process of testing Judge Sonia Sotomayor for confirmation. The process – as Sessions sees it – can “go forward in a way that the American people can be proud of.”

During the last presidential campaign, Republicans complained that Obama did not make America proud during his Senate career when he threw his support behind “activist judges” or objected to conservatives Roberts and Alito. Yet the pair made it into the Supreme Court due to the conservative majority in the Senate at the time. That’s actually good news for free market enterprise, as those of conservative bent tend to side for consumer financial freedoms like the right to installment loans and quick cash loans.

Sotomayor on the record

How has Judge Sonia Sotomayor ruled on key issues? That is indicative of the nominee’s record, is it not? The New York Times has provided a convenient report. Let’s take a look. Plus, here’s a Sonia Sotomayor biography.

• Racial discrimination

The case that put Sotomayor’s name in lights, so to speak, is Ricci v. DeStefano. It’s also the crux of the conservative argument against her. They’re claiming Sotomayor is racist, because she failed to stand against reverse discrimination. The details are that a group of white firefighters (one Hispanic) in New Haven, Connecticut were passed over for promotions. In their lawsuit, they alleged that this occurred because there were no eligible African-American candidates for consideration. In my book, they should have been promoted if their service record warranted. Would it somehow be tainted if there were no black candidates to consider? Ridiculous, I assure you.

Judge Sotomayor (as part of an appeals court panel) ruled in favor of rejecting the firefighters’ lawsuit and declined to rehear the case. Now the Supreme Court is reconsidering the case. The consideration is whether diversity in the workplace should be treated any differently from diversity in the classroom. In such a case (Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education), Sotomayor found that racial discrimination did indeed occur when an African-American child was demoted from first grade back to kindergarten.

“The school did not give the black student an equal chance to succeed (or fail),” ruled Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Were the firefighters given the same chance, Judge Sotomayor?

• Lawsuits against federal contractors

As evidenced in an opposing memo, Judge Sotomayor is “willing to expand constitutional rights beyond the text of the Constitution.” She ruled that a federal prisoner (in Makesko v. Correctional Services Corporation) who suffered a heart and attack and related injuries   could indeed sue the company that ran his facility for the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It seems that Makesko had previously been allowed to use an elevator instead of the facility stairs due to his heart condition, but a guard had forced him to use stairs one time.

The result was Makesko’s heart attack and injuries suffered from falling down said stairs. Judge Sotomayor “emphasized precedents that permitted suits against companies performing state government functions,” writes the New York Times. But here again, the Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor’s decision. Their ruling was that only individuals – not corporations – may be sued in these cases. The vote in the highest court was close, however. Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer dissented. Surprising no one, the conservative wing voted for big business protection. I give Sotomayor a big plus for her vote, however, as big businesses like the government shouldn’t be allowed to circumvent the law in this way.

• Environmental protection

What’s more important to you: cost cutting or the value of life? Judge Sonia Sotomayor voted for the latter (in Riverkeeper v. Environmental Protection Agency) when she ruled that the Environmental Protection Agency was in violation of the Clean Water Act when they sided with cost effectiveness of avoiding upgrades over saving aquatic organisms endangered by a power plant. Judge Sotomayor ruled that “weighing the costs of the changes against the value of the organisms in dollars” was unlawful.

And a conservative Supreme Court overturned Sotomayor again, in spite of the fact that Justices Stevens, Ginsburg and Souter dissented. Preservation of life must be the highest priority in my opinion. While it is impossible for human industry to have no detrimental impact upon our environment, a minimal “footprint” is most desirable. Achieving it at cost is the goal experts should strive toward.

• Workplace discrimination: disabilities

I have worked with students who have learning disabilities, so this topic is of particular interest to me. Judge Sotomayor ruled that a law school graduate with a reading and learning disability should be allowed to receive extra time in taking the bar exams. The Supreme Court ruled that Americans With Disabilities Act did not apply to the female student, in that her condition could be managed with glasses and medication. Thus, Sotomayor was overruled – again – and asked to retry the case (Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners). Sticking to her guns, Sotomayor ruled once more that the woman was disabled and deserved accommodations.

• International law

Sotomayor’s ruled in favor of the Hague Convention on International Child Abduction in Croll v. Croll. It involved a child custody case where one parent took the child out of the country of residence without the permission of the court and the non-custodial parent. The court ruled that the removal of the child by the custodial mother was not wrong (because she had primary custody rights). Judge Sotomayor dissented, asking for a “broader interpretation of custody that is more in line with the object and purpose of the Hague Convention.” This question of interpretation is currently before the Supreme Court in Abbott v. Abbott.

• Second Amendment

With President Obama threatening to take guns away, the Second Amendment has been in the news quite a bit lately. Judge Sotomayor appears to be very much in Obama’s court on this one, as she rejected a claim (in Maloney v. Cuomo) that banning nunchaku (a martial arts weapon) violated a man’s Second Amendment rights. Interestingly, Sotomayor claimed that the Second Amendment only applied to the federal government.

How convenient for the federal government! I suppose that Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money” was prophetic. First, Franklin Delano Roosevelt confiscates our gold, now the rights of citizens to bear arms is under fire… it’s hitting the fan right about now.

• Abortion

Not an uncontroversial topic in the bunch here. Judge Sotomayor served on a Circuit Court where she denied a claim brought by an abortion rights group against a President George W. Bush (The Center for Reproductive Law and Policy v. Bush) policy. Sotomayor upheld Bush’s policy that prohibited foreign organizations on U.S. soil from receiving foreign funds for either performing or supporting abortions. This is part “keep it in America,” part indicative that Sotomayor does have conservative leanings in their somewhere.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor – your Supreme Court Justice?

It remains to be seen how the Senate will vote in Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing. Judging by the liberal Democratic majority now, I’ll give you three guesses how this will turn out. But I hold out some major caveats over the choice, myself. I’m all for a Supreme Court Justice who is female, Hispanic and (most importantly) qualified. But as my comments above indicate, I have concerns over how Sotomayor will rule on some of our essential freedoms. Will she side with Obama in his drive to regulate installment loans and quick cash loans out of existence? Stay tuned.

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