More important than the fact that Obama Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s appellate ruling simply was overturned yesterday was that her ruling was that she treated the meritorious (and ultimately victorious) claims of the New Haven fire fighters so dismissively.
It seems that in Sotomayor’s world race-neutral, merit-based promotion systems are scarcely even worthy of consideration as legal and legitimate. For her, a subjective standard of judicial “empathy” trumps not only basic fairness but also the need to give basic fairness any serious consideration.
Below the fold is a video response from the Colorado Judicial Network:
The majority opinion indeed acted to narrow, not completely eliminate, the “disparate impact†provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Still, it’s a step in the right direction.
Also, read Justice Antonin Scalia’s concurring opinion, which more directly addressed the issue of the constitutionality of “disparate impact:â€
JUSTICE SCALIA, concurring.
I join the Court’s opinion in full, but write separately to observe that its resolution of this dispute merely post-pones the evil day on which the Court will have to confront the question: Whether, or to what extent, are the disparate-impact provisions of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 consistent with the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection?
http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1428.pdf
For additional analysis and insight (including Alito’s superb rebuke of Ginsburg’s dissent), take a look at
http://www.clearthebenchcolorado.org/2009/06/29/rule-of-law1-empathy0-supremes-reverse-sotomayor/