Supreme Court Overturns Sotomayor

[punked]

Didn't seem to hurt the Democrats as much when they derailed the nomination of one Miguel Estrada.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics...e-46407227.html

That is because their arguement wasn't "He is a racist!!!!" Their arguement ,and it was a good one becuase Bush often did this, was that he was unqualified and untested. Putting a guy on the bench of the Second most powerful court in the states that has not even served on a lesser court bench. You are comparing apples to oranges

I don't think someone who is Hispanic should get a position becuase they are Hispanic. That is a Republican argument "We shouldn't nominate her because she is Hispanic and thus hates white people" They should get it becuase they are qualified and experienced. Like I said keep these terrible arguments up the next election cycle is close enough this could swing it our way.

[ironstone]

That was not what the case was about. It was about a test which was discriminatory. If you read what the Supreme court wrote they wrote she made the right call becuase they were ruling on what has been said and ruled before. She was no legislating from the bench like so many judges do which is wrong. The Supreme court wrote they set a new president which well with in their power it was not within Sotomayor power do that though.

New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/opinion/...amp;ref=opinion

Honestly keep calling her a racist and lose the whole Hispanic vote in 2012. Take New Mexico, Florida, Nevada, Colorado, and even Arizona out of play and see what you are left with.

Can you be more specific?What exactly made the test discriminatory?

[lictor616]

Now this is an interesting turn of events...

The Supreme Court today narrowly ruled in favor of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who said they were denied promotions because of their race, reversing a decision by Judge Sonia Sotomayor and others that had come to play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...2901608_pf.html

Should make for very lively hearings later this summer.

I must say I was astounded by that... I thought that the District Of Corruption was... well ... terminally corrupt, and that not a single honest person resided there... perhaps this gives us some reason for cautious optimism...

Although I suspect that this was done to temporarily placate the growing minority of whites who are asking for racial advocacy (as all the other racial groups get).

I just can't get over her unbelievable statement:

“I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

She also says sex and race “may and will make a difference in our judging.”

Miss Sotomayor’s record bears out her self-proclaimed racial bias!" and yet this is considered acceptable even estimable in the New america... racism is good... so long as the racism isn't white... that's the corner stone of American and Canadian liberal doctrine.

[punked]

Can you be more specific?What exactly made the test discriminatory?

I can be but before I explain you have to take your gut reaction and put it aside and read what I am going to write. I am not saying it is right or wrong, I am saying under the law as laid out previously by the Supreme court she made the right call and the court said as much in their ruling.

"In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary."

Because the test given only promoted non blacks it was discriminatory. So unless those doing the promoting can show it was necessary then the test has to be thrown out. That is up until yesterday when the court changed the law. So now we know she made the right call and wasn't one of those right wing judges who legislates from the bench, like Shay and BC apparently want. Never mind she was right in her ruling.

[Shady]

Because the test given only promoted non blacks it was discriminatory.

How exactly did the test promote only non-Blacks? So you're saying the test was done in a way in which only White and Hispanic firefighters would do well? How is that even possible? Give it up man, you've lost.

[lictor616]

I can be but before I explain you have to take your gut reaction and put it aside and read what I am going to write. I am not saying it is right or wrong, I am saying under the law as laid out previously by the Supreme court she made the right call and the court said as much in their ruling.

"In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary."

Because the test given only promoted non blacks it was discriminatory. So unless those doing the promoting can show it was necessary then the test has to be thrown out. That is up until yesterday when the court changed the law. So now we know she made the right call and wasn't one of those right wing judges who legislates from the bench, like Shay and BC apparently want. Never mind she was right in her ruling.

what are you actually suggesting firefighters should DROP THEIR STANDARDS? Should they drop for instance the strength training portion of it (heavy lifting and moving) which is ESSENTIAL to a firefighter (as he will often encounter doors who need to be broken in, people who need to be moved etc... should we drop the strength aspect just to let in more women?

what of LUNACY is this?! Whats next abolishing hard medical tests to allow more people with downs to become doctors?!

god my eyes are bleeding thanks to your post punked...

[punked]

See this is why I said put your bias aside for the reading of the post. Did I say I agreed with the law? No I didn't. I said she did what a judge who is not on the Supreme court should do. She ruled by the law.

This is the law "a test that one racial group passed at less than 80 percent the rate of another group would place an employer in presumptive violation of Title VII."

That is the law until yesterday when it changed. You think Judges should be able to change the written law at any whim they so feel? That is what you guys think? OK fine I don't think judges should be allowed to legislate from the Bench Shady and lictor616 apparently you do I will keep that in mind.

what are you actually suggesting firefighters should DROP THEIR STANDARDS? Should they drop for instance the strength training portion of it (heavy lifting and moving) which is ESSENTIAL to a firefighter (as he will often encounter doors who need to be broken in, people who need to be moved etc... should we drop the strength aspect just to let in more women?

Have you read the law under Title VII. If you can prove it is essential to the job you can prove it non discriminatory. So heavy lifting is essential to the job so you aren't even making sense in this post. Put more words into my mouth so you look dumb please.

[benny]

what are you actually suggesting firefighters should DROP THEIR STANDARDS? Should they drop for instance the strength training portion of it (heavy lifting and moving) which is ESSENTIAL to a firefighter (as he will often encounter doors who need to be broken in, people who need to be moved etc... should we drop the strength aspect just to let in more women?

what of LUNACY is this?! Whats next abolishing hard medical tests to allow more people with downs to become doctors?!

god my eyes are bleeding thanks to your post punked...

Racism is the first fire to combat unless you want white firefighters to be killed by rocks thrown by non-whites each time they get out of their fire stations.

[WIP]

I'm really puzzled as to why you go back to page 1 of this thread to single out the only post I made and ignore 40-something other posts, I must be doing something right, heheheh.

I was going to comment about the idiot who thinks that the case will pit blacks against hispanics because one of the 20 complainants was hispanic, but it wasn't worth the effort. Most of the other comments were regarding whether the lower court decision was reverse-discrimination, not whether the test results were evidence that blacks are inferior, as you were attempting to offer up. But, what caught my attention is that used the test scores as evidence of inferiority, but wouldn't come right out and say it, like some others would have.

At any rate, I'm not going to answer 'the question' when you call me a racist and a eunuch, I'm like, really hurt.

As if you would have answered the question anyway!

But if a white guy can hire a tutor to help him pass a test, then so can a black one.

It costs a few coins to hire private tutors; if the tutor made the difference, that would be a clear indication of economic advantage.

Tell you what, sport. Why don't you use google to do some research on the percentage of cases that have been overturned. I found it, can you? You're off base with that leftwing nonsense about 1.3%.

The claim made by Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and a few other right wing notables was that 60% to 80% of Judge Sotomayor's decisions were overturned by higher courts. There was no qualifier mentioning that they were pulling the number from the few actual number of cases that were reviewed by higher court.

Of the 237 cases found by Newsweek, using a LexisNexis search, only five were reviewed by higher court, and since the cases that are going to come up for review, are the ones that attract a high degree of opposition on the Supreme Court, it's not surprising that three were overturned. The default assumption of the 232 cases that were not subject for review was that they would have likely have been approved by the higher court. But right wing propagandists have tried to bury the fact that only five decisions were called up, because they want to leave their uninformed readers with the implication of judicial incompetence with the assumption that 60 to 80 % of her decisions were rejected by the higher court. By any other name it is fraud.

*this article was written before the Ricci vs. DiStefano decision

It's good to see you reading Rush, keep at it and you may learn something about the MSM.

Yes! I have learned that Rush Limbaugh can only defend his lies by making up more lies, as noted at the end of the Newsweek piece, where a reader alerted them to Rush's calculation methods, where he pulled one of her district court decisions that was overturned (but included no analysis of the other 442 rulings she made; and Rush falsely claimed in his calculations that " Knight v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue" was overturned, which was not the case, thought they disagreed with the reasoning of the lower court.

Accurate numbers on Sotomayor have been reported even in some limited areas of the MSM, have you found anything with google yet?

Are you too lazy to even bother reading the Newsweek article I linked?

During its 2006-2007 term, for instance, the Court reversed or vacated (which, for our purposes here, mean the same thing) 68 percent of the cases before it. The rate was 73.6 percent the previous term.

In two of the three Sotomayor reversals, at least some of the more liberal justices dissented, agreeing with her holding.

One was a 5-4 decision in 2001 in Correctional Services Corporation v. Malesko, which involved an inmate who sought to sue a private contractor operating a halfway house on behalf of the Bureau of Prisons over injuries he sustained. Sotomayor said he could, but a majority of the justices disagreed.In another case, Sotomayor wrote that under the Clean Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency could not use a cost-benefit analysis to determine the best technology available for drawing cooling water into power plants with minimal impact on aquatic life. By a vote of 6-3 this year, the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in Entergy v. Riverkeeper. The third reversal, in 2005, was a unanimous 8-0 decision in the case Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc. v. Dabit.Sotomayor had written that a class action securities suit brought in state court by a broker/stockholder was not preempted by the 1998 Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act. But the high court's opinion said it "would be odd, to say the least" if the law contained the exception that Sotomayor said it did.

More leftwing nonsense. Look, they hired an independent organization to formulate the course and test according to the duties of the job.

The five conservative members of the Supreme Court put a lot of trust in the "independence" of the consultants who were brought in to create the "unbiased" tests. It's also worth noting that one of them -- Sam Alito -- claimed that a prominent black minister, who was also an important supporter of the mayor of New Haven, was chiefly responsible for the lower court decision. There are many suspicions that Alito and Antonin Scalia are looking for a case that will allow them to strike Title 7 from the Civil Rights Act, so much for all of the whining about judicial activism! So, they must of have been let down by Kennedy's attempt to limit the impact of the decision.

If some people fail, they need to study harder next time, or overcome their learning disabilities as the dyslexic did. A simple review of the marks each applicant had in high school would probably convince even you, wip, that poor students usually fail tests.

His preparations and outside help for the test may have enabled him to get a high score on this particular test, but what about actual on-the-job situations? Dyslexia doesn't go away after you pass a test; and tips that may have helped with these specific series of tests, will not make dyslexia go away in realtime situations that cannot be prepared for.

At any rate, the US supreme court got it right, and you got it wrong.

Yes, I am sure you studied this issue as exhaustively as usual!

[ironstone]

It's possible that racism in this case is a red herring.It's a sad fact of life that qualifications for a job are not the sole criteria for hiring or not hiring the person in question.Whether we admit it or not,who you know trumps actual qualifications for these plum jobs.Friends and relatives often have the inside track for the best jobs and this is true for much of the job market.I hate it,but it's a fact of life.I recall a guy I know who was pretty worthless(lazy,missed time,police record etc)as an employee but he spoke french and his neighbor who was with Public Works Canada gave him a copy of the french exam and boom,he is a public servant.Where does merit fit in?

[benny]

Friends and relatives often have the inside track for the best jobs and this is true for much of the job market.

Nepotism is a bit more understandable than racism because inside a family there is more trust than inside a "race".

[August1991]

Tell me!?

This Supreme Court decision in effect decided that there are limits on affirmative action (or on positive discrimination). Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito decided in favour (to put limits on affirmative action) and Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer decided that affirmative action should be allowed in this case.

Souter is the retiring justice and Obama wants to replace him with Sotomayer, someone presumed to support affirmative action. Hence, on this issue, Sotomayor doesn't change the balance of the court.

Will Kymlicka is I think the most respected Canadian specialist on these matters. After reading him, I have come to the conclusion that it is preferable to speak of collective rights more than minority rights.

http://post.queensu.ca/~kymlicka/

Collective rights might be a better term than minority rights (given that Catholics are a plurality in Canada) but I really don't care about terminology in this instance.

IMHO, the US experience of slavery and racial relations have had an unfortunate impact on left wing English Canadian thinking, and this explains why Canadian Human Rights Commissions are like making a fish ride a bicycle. In fact, civil rights is a debate for Americans to which we Canadians are bystanders.

Our way of dealing with these issues has been different. In Newfoundland, the old tradition was that if the minister was Catholic, the deputy minister was Protestant. Since Blake, the federal Liberals have alternated leaders by maternal language. So, it's not even constitutional - it's also tradition.

Perhaps most fundamentally of all, when Canada finally settled on a method of self-rule, one province had a majority of Catholics and francophones. (The equivalent in the US would be moving all blacks to Tennessee, Alabama and Missippippi so that they would be 80% of the population in thoses states.)

Edited July 2, 2009 by August1991

[benny]

This Supreme Court decision in effect decided that there are limits on affirmative action (or on positive discrimination). Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, and Alito decided in favour (to put limits on affirmative action) and Ginsburg, Stevens, Souter and Breyer decided that affirmative action should be allowed in this case.

Souter is the retiring justice and Obama wants to replace him with Sotomayer, someone presumed to support affirmative action. Hence, on this issue, Sotomayor doesn't change the balance of the court.

But bush_cheney2004 was not speaking about this upcoming retirement but of a justice who recuses (sic!) him/herself (see post #17).

[Shady]

I can be but before I explain you have to take your gut reaction and put it aside and read what I am going to write. I am not saying it is right or wrong, I am saying under the law as laid out previously by the Supreme court she made the right call and the court said as much in their ruling.

"In a 1971 decision, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a test that was “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation” could violate Title VII even without proof that the discrimination was intentional. Congress eventually amended Title VII to codify that decision, Griggs v. Duke Power. The rule was clear: if a job requirement produced a “disparate impact,” the employer had the burden of showing that the requirement was actually necessary."

Because the test given only promoted non blacks it was discriminatory. So unless those doing the promoting can show it was necessary then the test has to be thrown out. That is up until yesterday when the court changed the law. So now we know she made the right call and wasn't one of those right wing judges who legislates from the bench, like Shay and BC apparently want. Never mind she was right in her ruling.

How exactly did the test promote only non-Blacks? So you're saying the test was done in a way in which only White and Hispanic firefighters would do well? How is that even possible? Give it up man, you've lost.

Again, how was the test done in a way in which only White and Hispanic firefighters would do well? How would one even go about designing such a test?

[punked]

Again, how was the test done in a way in which only White and Hispanic firefighters would do well? How would one even go about designing such a test?

See you clearly don't understand the law when you ask this question. Here how about this you explain the law to becuase you know what we aren't arguing if the law is right we are arguing if Sotomayor fallowed the law when she ruled.

PS she did.

[bush_cheney2004]

See you clearly don't understand the law when you ask this question. Here how about this you explain the law to becuase you know what we aren't arguing if the law is right we are arguing if Sotomayor fallowed the law when she ruled.

PS she did.

No, she perpetuated an unconstitutional law...and has now paid the price. Funny, since she is advertised as being the most qualified nominee in the past 50 years.

[punked]

No, she perpetuated an unconstitutional law...and has now paid the price. Funny, since she is advertised as being the most qualified nominee in the past 50 years.

What law explain. I explained the way I see it. The Supreme court is the only one is causes where precedent is known that should be changing not minor court judges. I know you love legislation from the bench I don't.

She wont pay any price the Republicans in heavy Latino states will vote to confirm her and she will sail threw the process. Even Newt has stopped talking when he took a big hit with Latinos.

[bush_cheney2004]

What law explain. I explained the way I see it. The Supreme court is the only one is causes where precedent is known that should be changing not minor court judges. I know you love legislation from the bench I don't.

Nonsense....you love anything done on a bench.

She wont pay any price the Republicans in heavy Latino states will vote to confirm her and she will sail threw the process. Even Newt has stopped talking when he took a big hit with Latinos.

She has already paid a price, and will need extra coaching for the hearings. Her confirmation was never in doubt.

[punked]

Nonsense....you love anything done on a bench.

I knew you knew nothing about the ruling.

She has already paid a price, and will need extra coaching for the hearings. Her confirmation was never in doubt.

I don't think this one was a sure thing from the start.

[bush_cheney2004]

I knew you knew nothing about the ruling.

...that's why I started the thread...duh!

I don't think this one was a sure thing from the start.

Then we know you are clueless about the case law as well.

[punked]

...that's why I started the thread...duh!

Proves nothing to me you have said nothing of the law which they ruled on.

[bush_cheney2004]

Proves nothing to me you have said nothing of the law which they ruled on.

I don't have to prove anything to you. Her majority ruling was overturned....she is batting only .400 for reviewed cases...great for baseball....not good for an appellate judge.

Edited July 3, 2009 by bush_cheney2004

[punked]

I don't have to prove anything to you. Her majority ruling was overturned....she is batting only .400 for reviewed cases...great for baseball....not good for an appellate judge.

Yet they said she had the right ruling for the precedent at the time in their 82 page ruling. That might have got by you.

The other funny thing .400 for reviewed cases is above average for the court. You can't spin facts and this why she is going to be just fine.

[bush_cheney2004]

Yet they said she had the right ruling for the precedent at the time in their 82 page ruling. That might have got by you.

Precedent is for pussies.

The other funny thing .400 for reviewed cases is above average for the court. You can't spin facts and this why she is going to be just fine.

I already said she will be confirmed....we're just gonna have some fun with her a la Clarence Thomas.

[punked]

Precedent is for pussies.

Yah I know you love those who legislate from the Bench good thing we have a Obama making appointments.