Obama's Supreme Court Nominee is Overruled

The Washington Post reports that the Supreme Court reversed a decision by Judge Sotomayor Monday by ruling in favor of a group of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn. who claimed that they were denied promotions due to their race.

"The city had thrown out the results of a promotion test because no African Americans and only two Hispanics would have qualified for promotions. It said it feared a lawsuit from minorities under federal laws that said such 'disparate impacts' on test results could be used to show discrimination. In effect, the court was deciding when avoiding potential discrimination against one group amounted to actual discrimination against another."

This is not the first time, Sotomayor beliefs have differed from that of the Supreme Court's majority. Texas GOP Vote.com previously blogged about Sotomayor's decision that went against the Second Amendment saying that it was okay for individual states and cities to ban all guns. We all know how the Supreme Court ruled in regard to the D.C. gun ban last year.

There have also been claims that Sotomayor's past will influence the objectivity of her rulings. This New Haven case, Ricci v. DeStefano, has become the evidence that Sotomayor's critics point to in order to demonstrate that this is true.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy explained that an employer may only discard a test if there is strong reason to believe that the test is biased in a way that discriminates against minorities. When Sotomayor ruled that the tests be thrown out, she based this decision on the results of the test and not the content of the actual test.

In Ricci v. DeStefano, Kennedy explains that "there is no evidence that the tests were flawed because they were not job-related or because other, equally valid and less discriminatory tests were available to the city."

"The lead plaintiff, Frank Ricci, is a veteran firefighter who said in sworn statements that he spent thousands of dollars in preparation and studied for months for the exam. Ricci said he is dyslexic, so he had tapes made of the test materials and listened to them on his commute to work."

Why did Sotomayor think she had the right to take Ricci's and many other hard-working firefighters' well-deserved promotions away? Hopefully the Supreme Court's overruling of Sotomayor will play a large role in the consideration of her nomination for the high court. Maybe Obama should start thinking more carefully about who he nominates.