New Haven Register
Published: Sunday, May 10, 2009
By Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor
NEW HAVEN — Judge Sonia Sotomayor has a lot going for her, as President Barack Obama looks to fill the soon-to-be-vacated seat held by Justice David H. Souter.With 16 years of experience in the federal courts, the last 11 as a member of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York, she has been described as a smart, hard worker, who takes no nonsense and expects litigants to be on their toes.Her high-profile decisions include, among others, ending the eight-month long baseball strike in 1995, by siding with labor, and allowing the Wall Street Journal to publish the suicide note of Vincent Foster.Sotomayor’s opinions have been characterized as moderate to liberal and she has not been afraid to disagree with the government on cases involving the White House and the religious rights of prisoners, according to analysts.But the case that will likely get the most scrutiny, if she is nominated, is Ricci v. DeStefano, New Haven’s firefighter case, which is seen as a major referendum on affirmative action with a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court expected this spring.Sotomayor was on a three-judge panel at the 2nd District Court of Appeals that upheld New Haven’s decision to throw out the test results, where 19 white firefighters and one Hispanic would have been promoted, but no blacks.The panel was criticized by Circuit Judge Jose A. Cabranes for adopting in full the ruling of U.S. District Court Judge Janet Bond Arterton without any elaboration or affirmation, something that is usually reserved for clear-cut, uncomplicated cases.“The questions raised in this appeal cannot be classified as such, as they are indisputably complex and far from well-settled,” Cabranes wrote for the dissenters in a 7-6 vote in which he failed to convince the full court to rehear the appeal.The case goes to the application of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and Title VII’s prohibition on discriminatory employment practices and has generated discussion across the political spectrum.The question is can a city ignore the results of an exam, which was written to ensure race-neutrality, if it “yielded too many applicants of one race and not enough of another?” Cabranes asked.
Full Story: http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2009/05/10/news/new_haven/a1judge.txt
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