The Truth Squad for Justice for Justice Sotomayor

Sotomayor is not "an affirmative action pick"

Unfortunately - but unsurprisingly - soon after President Obama announced that he had selected a Latina nominee to replace Justice Souter as Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor's opponents were quick to denounce her as "an affirmative action pick" who was selected solely because of her race and gender.
 
These critics are so blinded by their own rhetoric and ideology that they can't see the facts.   
 
Judge Sotomayor (i) graduated from two Ivy League schools with high honors and achievements, (ii) brings to the bench a diverse background and wealth of experience, having worked as a prosecutor, partner in a law firm and a judge, and (iii) has more prior judicial experience than any other Justice currently on the Supreme Court bench and more prior federal judicial experience than any Justice in the last 100 years.

Many of her detractors assail Judge Sotomayor by saying she was only chosen because she is a Latina and because she is a woman, but her objective stellar credentials tell another story: 

- She graduated from Princeton, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.

- She received her law degree from Yale Law School, one of the most prestigious law programs in the country, and was editor of the Yale Law Journal.

- She had 17 years of experience on the federal bench at the time of her Supreme Court nomination (a longer federal district and appellate court career than any sitting Supreme Court Justice).

- She has more overall judicial experience than any Supreme Court Justice in 70 years and more federal judicial experience than any Supreme Court Justice in 100 years.

- She brings five years of experience as a former Assistant District Attorney in Manhattan where she has been described as a “tough-as-nails” prosecutor. 

- She was a partner at law firm Pavia and Harcourt.

- She was the youngest member appointed to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York (appointed by Republican President George H.W. Bush).

- She was the first Latina on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, and has a decade's worth of experience on that court.

And don’t just take our word for it; see what her former boss, legendary New York District Attorney Robert Morgenthau had to say::

“Most importantly, I am astonished that she has been disparaged as an "affirmative action" beneficiary. Whatever position one takes on affirmative action, it is simply unreasonable, if not racist, so to impugn this individual. She may be a woman, and she may be a Latina. But Sonia Sotomayor possesses an abundance of wisdom, intelligence, collegiality and good character. Sotomayor is where she is today because of her talent. Those who insinuate otherwise don't know her, or simply paint her as they do for political reasons having nothing to do with the truth.”

Judge Sotomayor’s opponents have also twisted her statement from a 1994 interview that she is a “product of affirmative action” to support their position.  However, as Judge Sotomayor explained, while her standardized test scores may have been lower than some of her classmates, they were “not so far off the mark that [she] wasn’t able to succeed at those institutions.”  Indeed, by any measure, Judge Sotomayor excelled - graduating summa cum laude from Princeton and serving as editor of the Yale Law Journal at Yale Law School.

Some critics have gone further. Wendy Long of the conservative Judicial Confirmation Network has argued that Judge Sotomayor’s “affirmative action” past and comments about the same reflect an unfair bias against whites. This bias, she and others argue, is evidenced in the Ricci v. DiStefano case, where a three judge panel, on which Judge Sotomayor sat, rejected the discrimination claims of white firefighters who claimed they were denied promotions based on their race. 

But as was shown in the prior Truth Squad Memo, Ricci was a unanimous panel decision case decided on the facts and applying long-standing Second Circuit precedent. 

More to the point, including Ricci, Judge Sotomayor has decided some 97 race-related cases while on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.  Of the 97 cases, Judge Sotomayor and the panel rejected the claim of discrimination roughly 78 times and upheld the discrimination claim only 10 times. And of those 10, 9 were unanimous.

As Tom Goldstein of SCOTUSblog recently and persuasively argued Judge Sotomayor’s record shows that she does not allow any racial bias to affect her decision-making –  quite the contrary, her opinions and record reflect judicial restraint, moderation and a fair application of the law to the facts.