As everyone knows by now, President Obama's candidate for the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, is under fire for her comment that she thinks a wise Latina woman would come to better conclusions on many court cases than would some old white guy, or something. Be that as it may, the details of her ruling in the Ricci case - which is now before the Supreme Court - leave a lot of doubt whether wisdom is a trait of which this particular Latina can boast.
Stuart Taylor at National Journal reviews the details of the case and shows beyond a reasonable doubt that "the decision to kill the promotions (in the Ricci case) was driven less by purported legal concerns than by raw racial politics."
Taylor adds that:
But the unmistakable logic of Sotomayor's position would encourage employers to discriminate against high-scoring groups based on race -- no matter how valid and lawful the qualifying test -- in any case in which disproportionate numbers of protected minorities have low scores, as is the norm.
Such logic would convert disparate-impact law into an engine of overt discrimination against high-scoring groups across the country and allow racial politics and racial quotas to masquerade as voluntary compliance with the law.
In other words, this "highly intelligent," "highly accomplished," "empathetic" Latina judge likes to lift the blindfold that represents a judge's indifference to who stands before her in her court in order to take a peek at the skin color of the people involved in the case. She then rules accordingly. Her much vaunted empathy appears to be very color specific.
Read the rest of Taylor's essay at the link to gain a good idea of the sort of person President Obama thinks should be dispensing justice in America.
RLC
