Justice Sotomayor?

Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families: Today, President Obama announced Appeals Court Judge Sonia Sotomayor as his nominee to replace retiring liberal Supreme Court Justice David Souter. We know Judge Sotomayor is a liberal who once declared that the courts are “where policy is made.” Obama assured us during the campaign for the presidency that he would appoint judges with “empathy” – judges who knew, in the president’s words, “what it’s like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.” Sotomayor certainly fits that description.

Sotomayor has a compelling biography – a true American success story. Sotomayor is a Hispanic woman who grew up in the Bronx. Her father died when she was young, but her mother pushed her to excel in school. She graduated from Princeton and finished at the top of her law class at Yale. She now serves on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. But the classic “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” bio found little favor among Senate Democrats during Clarence Thomas’ confirmation hearings.

And far from believing the ideal of a meritocracy, where one succeeds based on their merits, Sotomayor appears to have very radical ideas when it comes to affirmative action and quotas. A case pending before the United States Supreme Court involves a suit brought by Frank Ricci, a white firefighter in Connecticut.

In that case, Ricci took and passed a promotion exam, but the city of New Haven refused to promote Ricci, and, according to one press account, “threw out results of a promotion exam because too few minorities scored high enough.” Of that injustice, liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen wrote, “Ricci is not just a legal case but a man who has been deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race.”

A liberal columnist saw the injustice of the Ricci case, but Sotomayor sided with the city of New Haven, and her opinion was thrashed by a fellow judge for “ignoring the constitutional claims at the core of the case.” How could she so easily ignore the constitutional issues at stake? Because it’s all about “empathy.” She, like Obama, seems to care more about desired political results and her sense of “fairness.”

And what are we to make of this Sotomayor statement: “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” Can you imagine the reaction of Senate liberals if a white male candidate had dared to suggest that well-educated men could reach better conclusions than black or Hispanic women?

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his life fighting for the day when we would judge one another based on the content of our character, not the color of our skin. Americans of all political persuasions and ethnic backgrounds should be repulsed by Sotomayor’s comment and deeply concerned about her commitment to colorblind justice.

You can read more of my thoughts on the Sotomayor nomination in a column posted today at Politico.com.

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