May 29, 2009: Legal Analysis Disproves Charges of Racial Bias from Supreme Court Nominee

Tom Goldstein, the veteran lawyer who maintains the nonpartisan Supreme Court watchdog Web site “SCOTUSblog” (see May 26, 2009), completes an analysis of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s (see May 26, 2009) rulings on race-related court cases. Sotomayor has come under intense fire for supposedly being a “racist” and allowing her “personal bias”—her Hispanic heritage—to influence her decisions from the bench (see May 26, 2009, May 26, 2009, May 27-29, 2009, May 27, 2009, May 28, 2009, May 28, 2009, and May 28, 2009). As a member of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Sotomayor has ruled on 96 race-related cases. One of those is still on appeal to the Supreme Court. Of those 96 cases, Sotomayor and the entire panel rejected the claim of discrimination 78 times, and agreed with the claim 10 times. The remaining eight involved other kinds of claims or dispositions. Of the 10 favorable rulings, nine of those were unanimous. Seven of those nine rulings involved at least one Republican-appointed judge. In the one divided ruling, the dissent involved a technical question of whether the criminal defendent had forfeited his right to challenge the jury selection in his case. Goldstein concludes: “So Judge Sotomayor rejected discrimination-related claims by a margin of roughly 8 to 1.… [I]n sum, in an 11-year career on the Second Circuit, Judge Sotomayor has participated in roughly 100 panel decisions involving questions of race and has disagreed with her colleagues in those cases (a fair measure of whether she is an outlier) a total of four times.… Given that record, it seems absurd to say that Judge Sotomayor allows race to infect her decisionmaking.” [SCOTUSblog, 5/29/2009]