Supreme Court Smacks Down Sotomayor...Again

Barack Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to be his first Supreme Court appointment.  She's a complete Leftist hack and racist, and has openly admitted that she believes judges should write law from the bench (which is expressly unconstitutional) and rule on the basis of fairness preferences rather than the law (which is also expressly unconstitutional).  In other words, she's the perfect nominee for Barack Obama.  You can see previous posts on her here and here.

In addition to all that, her decisions have been overturned over 60% of the time, meaning her judgments are suspect at best.  One of the biggest examples of her suspect judgment was a fairly recent example in which a group of firefighters in New Haven, Connecticut took a test to determine promotions.  Of all who scored high enough on the test to earn the promotion, not one was black.  The test results were thrown out, then, since it was clearly a racist test (but only racist against blacks...there were some Hispanics who passed, too).  Of course, the firefighters disagreed and sued for discrimination.  When the case reached Sotomayor on the appeals circuit, she basically threw it out without even digging into it.  Now, the Supreme Court has reversed her ruling in a 5-4 decision (though in reality, not a single Justice agreed with Sotomayor's initial ruling).

You may be wondering why this matters.  It's simple: if this woman is placed on the Supreme Court, she will have a dramatic effect on your life in the years to come.  Woe to you if you aren't a member of a minority, or if you happen to think the law should be applied fairly to every American, because you are up a creek without a paddle in her book!

Here are some important pieces of analysis of this decision that really illustrate this fact.

Ace of Spades:

Here's Justice Kennedy warning of what the Court absolutely must avoid:

A minimal standard could cause employers to discard the results of lawful and beneficial promotional examinations even where there is little if any evidence of disparate-impact discrimination. That would amount to a de facto quota system, in which a "focus on statistics . . . could put undue pressure on employers to adopt inappropriate prophylactic measures." Watson, 487
U. S., at 992 (plurality opinion). Even worse, an employer could discard test results (or other employment practices) with the intent of obtaining the employer's preferred racial balance.

And here's Justice Ginsburg on her preferred outcome:

By order of this Court, New Haven, a city in which African-Americans and Hispanics account for nearly 60 percent of the population, must today be served—as it was in the days of undisguised discrimination—by a fire department in which members of racial and ethnic minorities are rarely seen in command positions.

[...]

It is indeed regrettable that the City's noncertification decision would have required all candidates to go through another selection process. But it would have been more regrettable to rely on flawed exams to shut out candidates who may well have the command presence and other qualities needed to excel as fire officers.

"Command presence and other qualities" is Justice Ginsburg's euphemism for candidates with the right race.

Wendy Long at the Judicial Confirmation Network via Michelle Malkin:

"Frank Ricci finally got his day in court, despite the judging of Sonia Sotomayor, which all nine Justices of U.S. Supreme Court have now confirmed was in error.

"Usually, poor performance in any profession is not rewarded with the highest job offer in the entire profession.

"What Judge Sotomayor did in Ricci was the equivalent of a pilot error resulting in a bad plane crash. And now the pilot is being offered to fly Air Force One.

"The firefighters in New Haven who protect the public safety and worked hard for their promotions did not deserve to become victims of racial quotas, and the Supreme Court has now confirmed that they did not deserve to have their claims buried and thrown out by Judge Sotomayor."

Hot Air:

This creates a big problem for Obama and the Democrats in Congress.  They certainly have the votes to confirm Sotomayor, but their big sell — that she was one of the appellate court's most brilliant minds — just took a body blow on this decision.  Most people want to move past the old arguments on race and hiring, feeling that forty years of affirmative-action policies have run their course.  Having to defend a jurist who attempted to impose them in a court case will not make Sotomayor seem moderate or reasonable at all, but extreme and perhaps less than competent.

Still no word on the Senate GOP having enough spine to oppose her nomination, but this ruling provides at least a bit of hope that they might find some political willpower hiding in a corner somewhere.  In case they're having trouble finding it (or even bothering to look for it), you might consider calling your Senators and telling them what you think of this whole situation.

There's my two cents.