Sotomayor in Line with Supreme Dissenters
29 June 2009 1:29 pm by Taylor Marsh
Today, the Supreme Court ruled that precedent no longer matters. An illustration of how important Obama’s court appointments will turn out to be.
Cue the right-wing freakathon! Rush led the way today by reiterating his talking point that Sotomayor is a “racist.”
The Supreme Court ruled Monday that white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., were unfairly denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision that high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor endorsed as an appeals court judge. New Haven was wrong to scrap a promotion exam because no African-Americans and only two Hispanic firefighters were likely to be made lieutenants or captains based on the results, the court said Monday in a 5-4 decision. The city said that it had acted to avoid a lawsuit from minorities. …
Reality is that in her Court of Appeals decision she used precedent, which ended up in a unanimous decision, because other judges on the court agreed with her.
Text of today’s ruling is here.
However, James Joyner uses the opportunity to say that Justice Ginsberg’s dissent is “absurd.”
The usual suspects go full tilt unhinged. Thinkers they are not.
Glenn Greenwald outs the Supreme slim majority on this one:
3. For all the chatter about “judicial activism” and that dreadful Roberts metaphor of “a neutral umpire calling balls and strikes,” it is so striking how frequently conservative judges invalidate policies which conservatives dislike as a political matter. Here we have the conservative wing of the Court declaring illegal the employment decisions of local government officials, who used a political approach — diversity — which conservatives dislike on policy grounds. So often, the outcomes of the allegedly neutral conservative judges are completely consistent with (and aggressively advance) the political preferences of conservatives (Bush v. Gore being only the most obvious example). Indeed, few things are rarer than conservatives Justices invalidating policies that conservatives like politically, or upholding policies they despise — the true test for whether one applies to law independently of political and outcome preferences.
A new poll on the issue finds Americans agreeing across the political spectrum. The recession and unemployment fears, as well as the general unease with the economic situation today is a silent partner in these opinions. Just a guess.
“Not surprisingly, most Republicans think that the firefighters were victims of discrimination, but a majority of Democrats join in that view,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Fifty-seven percent of Democrats say the white firefighters were discriminated against. Two-thirds of Independents and three-quarters of Republicans agree.”
