Sotomayor's "racism"

GOP opponents tried to make the case against Sonia Sotomayor based on the reversal of her decision in the New Haven firefighters suit about reverse discrimination. See, the white guys got denied their promotions because the city decided, after the test was taken, that it was unfair to minorities because too few of them passed.

So they said she was prejudiced against whites and favored minorities. And they offered as proof that the Supreme Court had reversed the decision. Never mind that it was a 5-4 decision, and only one vote shift would have upheld her decision.

The argument in favor of her decision was the choice the city faced: if they used the test results, they would be vulnerable to a lawsuit from minority candidates for discrimination. So they threw out the test and got sued by the white candidates.

Sotomayor's decision was in keeping with legal precedent-- to avoid discrimination in public hiring. What the Supreme Court did was reverse that precedent and set a new policy -- so they, not Sotomayor, were the "activist judges," if you want to make that argument.

Now, further fuel to the fire of argument. In today's AJC, this item:

A federal judge is considering remedies after ruling Wednesday that the predominately white Fire Department of New York used recruitment exams that discriminate against blacks and hispanics. U.S. District judge Nicholas Garaufis found the discrimination occured in writen exams given to firefighter candidates from 1999 to 2007. Of the roughtly 11,000 firefighters in New York City, about 3 percent are black and 4.5 percent are Hispanic.

So, you see, New Haven was justifiably concerned that they would be sued for discrimination if they used the test results. The fact that a conservative Supreme Court reversed the decision by as narrow a margin as possible is no reflection on Sotomayor's reasoning or her fairness.

But, hey, politicians -- and I honestly believe that this is about 10 times as true of Republicans as Democrats -- don't argue based on reason or truth but on what they think will sway people to their objective of the moment. Just one more example of that.

Ralph