Ruling in firefighters case fuels critics of Sotomayor

The Supreme Court’s reversal Monday of a discrimination ruling involving a group of white Connecticut firefighters has provided critics of high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor with some fresh ammunition.

Republican senators and conservative groups contend that the justices’ 5-4 ruling on Ricci vs. DeStefano represents a rebuke of Sotomayor’s handling of the case. She was a member of a three-judge panel on the federal appeals court in New York that heard the action and sided against the white firefighters.

“This case will only raise more questions in the minds of the American people concerning Judge Sotomayor’s commitment to treat each individual fairly and not as a member of a group,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings before the committee are scheduled to begin July 13.

The New Haven, Conn., firefighters sued under federal civil rights laws after the results of a promotion test were thrown out. The city feared it would face a lawsuit from black and Latino firefighters claiming the tests had a discriminatory effect on minorities. The white plaintiffs lost at the trial court and before Sotomayor’s appeals court panel, but prevailed Monday in the Supreme Court.

Sotomayor’s critics have contended that the way her panel disposed of the case -- through a three-paragraph, unsigned opinion -- was as bad as the decision itself. By contrast, the Supreme Court’s ruling Monday was nearly 100 pages. “Not only did Judge Sotomayor misapply the law, but the perfunctory way in which she and her panel dismissed the firefighters’ meritorious claims of unfair treatment is particularly troubling,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

But Sotomayor’s supporters jumped to her defense Monday, saying that she and the other members of the panel were simply applying the governing federal law at the time to the claims of the white firefighters, which allowed New Haven to discard the civil service exam.

“It’s clear she is a modest judge,” said Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), a member of the Judiciary Committee. “She is not busy overturning cases. She is not imposing her own opinions on the law. She is following the law rigorously.”

Schumer said that the narrow division on the high court -- four justices backed the appeals court’s result, including Justice David H. Souter, whom Sotomayor would replace -- “bolsters the fact that she is a mainstream judge.”

Marge Baker, an executive vice president of the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way, said that in fashioning a new legal standard for such discrimination claims, the five-justice majority took a more radical approach than Sotomayor had. “You either want judges to follow the law, or you don’t,” Baker said. “If you want them to follow the law, you do what Judge Sotomayor and the panel did. If you want judicial activism . . . you do what the court did today.”

Conservative legal expert Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Law in Cleveland, said the Supreme Court decision wasn’t likely to lessen Sotomayor’s odds of being confirmed. But, he said, “the fact that it took the court nearly 100 pages to resolve this question does cast a shadow over the 2nd Circuit panel’s handling of the case, and may raise questions about her judgment.”

In a separate case, the Supreme Court on Monday indirectly put more pressure on senators to act quickly on Sotomayor’s nomination. It ordered a high-profile campaign-finance dispute to be re-argued Sept. 9 -- almost a month before the regular start of the term.

--

joliphant@latimes.com