Don't rush to a Sotomayor judgment

No further discussion is necessary to determine whether the U.S. Senate should take as much time as is needed for a thorough evaluation of Judge Sonia Sotomayor's record and jurisprudence. That's the take-away from the Supreme Court's reversal of the Ricci v New Haven decision Monday. The case is the result of the New Haven fire department's decision to throw out the results of a test used to determine who got promotions. The results were tossed because no minorities achieved high enough scores to gain promotions. The firemen who scored well on the test sued, arguing that promotions for which they were clearly qualified as a result of their test scores were nevertheless denied because of their race. When the case was appealed, Sotomayor joined other judges on the Second Circuit in unanimously affirming a lower court's ruling in summary judgment in favor of the decision to throw out the test results. In other words, Sotomayor approved of New Haven's decision to let racial considerations trump other considerations in determining eligibility for promotions.

Although the Court decision came on a 5-4 split among the justices, they all agreed (for different reasons) that the lower court used the wrong legal standard, according to the Ethics and Public Policy Center's Ed Whelan. Sotomayor and her colleagues too quickly dismissed the facts of the case and favored the racially discriminatory policy defended by New Haven. Welcome to the flipside of Sotomayor's "wise latina woman" remarks: Policies that benefit minorities are worthwhile because of the value of minority experience, but those that don't lead to more minority advancement should be dismissed.

The fact that this racialist theme keeps recurring in Sotomayor's reasoning recommends further investigation. This is also yet another instance of the Supreme Court taking issue with the way in which Sotomayor interprets the law. The Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn her decision in a 2007 case, saying that her reading of the relevant statutes was too narrow. In 2006, another of her rulings was upheld by the high court, but her reasoning was unanimously rejected because her approach "flies in the face of the statutory language."

Democrats want to rush confirmation through before the August recess. That's clearly too soon. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) says more time is also needed to review newly discovered documents from Sotomayor's time with the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. He should get it. Americans deserve to know whether the next Supreme Court Justice looks at skin color before the Constitution.