Posted on 06/29/2009 4:47:09 PM PDT by NoobRep
Sotomayor Cases Reviewed by the Supreme Court
• Affirmative Action: Ricci v. DeStefano 530 F.3d 87 (2008) - pending (now reversed 5-4) Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that ruled in February 2008 to uphold a lower court decision supporting the City of New Haven's decision to throw out the results of an exam to determine promotions within the city's fire department. Only one Hispanic and no African-American firefighters qualified for promotion based on the exam; the City subsequently decided not to certify the results and issued no promotions. In June 2008, Sotomayor was part of a 7-6 majority to deny a rehearing of the case by the full court. The Supreme Court agreed to review the case and heard oral arguments in April 2009.
• Affirmed on Health Insurance: Empire Healthchoice Assurance, Inc. vs. McVeigh, 396 F.3d 136 (2005) - affirmed 5-4 In 2005, Sotomayor ruled against a health insurance company that sued the estate of a deceased federal employee who received $157,000 in insurance benefits as the result of an injury. The wife of the federal employee had won $3.2 million in a separate lawsuit from those whom she claimed caused her husband's injuries. The health insurance company sued for reimbursement of the benefits paid to the federal employee, saying that a provision in the federal insurance plan requires paid benefits to be reimbursed when the beneficiary is compensated for an injury by a third party.
• Wrong on the environment: Riverkeeper, Inc. vs. EPA, 475 F.3d 83 (2007) - reversed 6-3 Sotomayor, writing for a three-judge panel, ruled that the EPA may not engage in a cost-benefit analysis in implementing a rule that the "best technology available" must be used to limit the environmental impact of power plants on nearby aquatic life. The case involved power plants that draw water from lakes and rivers for cooling purposes, killing various fish and aquatic organisms in the process. Sotomayor ruled that the "best technology" regulation did not allow the EPA to weigh the cost of implementing the technology against the overall environmental benefit when issuing its rules. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor's ruling in a 6-3 decision, saying that Sotomayor's interpretation of the "best technology" rule was too narrow.
• Wrong on taxes: Knight vs. Commissioner, 467 F.3d 149 (2006) - upheld but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted In 2006, Sotomayor upheld a lower tax court ruling that certain types of fees paid by a trust are only partly tax deductible. The Supreme Court upheld Sotomayor's decision but unanimously rejected the reasoning she adopted, saying that her approach "flies in the face of the statutory language."
• Wrong on finance: Dabit vs. Merrill Lynch, 395 F.3d 25 (2005) - reversed 8-0 In a 2005 ruling, Sotomayor overturned a lower court decision and allowed investors to bring certain types of fraud lawsuits against investment firms in state court rather than in federal court. The lower court had agreed with the defendant Merrill Lynch's argument that the suits were invalid because the Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act of 1998 required that such suits be brought only in federal court. The Supreme Court unanimously overturned Sotomayor's ruling, saying that the federal interest in overseeing securities market cases prevails and that doing otherwise could give rise to "wasteful, duplicative litigation."
• Wrong on Civil Rights: Malesko v. Correctional Services Corp., 299 F.3d 374 (2000) - reversed 5-4 Sotomayor, writing for the court in 2000, supported the right of an individual to sue a private corporation working on behalf of the federal government for alleged violations of that individual's constitutional rights. Reversing a lower court decision, Sotomayor found that an existing law, known as "Bivens," which allows suits against individuals working for the federal government for constitutional rights violations, could be applied to the case of a former prisoner seeking to sue the private company operating the federal halfway house facility in which he resided. The Supreme Court reversed Sotomayor's ruling, saying that the Bivens law could not be expanded to cover private entities working on behalf of the federal government.
• Wrong on Intellectual Property: Tasini vs. New York Times, et al, 972 F. Supp. 804 (1997) - reversed 7-2 As a district court judge in 1997, Sotomayor heard a case brought by a group of freelance journalists who asserted that various news organizations, including the New York Times, violated copyright laws by reproducing the freelancers' work on electronic databases and archives such as "Lexis/Nexis" without first obtaining their permission. Sotomayor ruled against the freelancers and said that publishers were within their rights as outlined by the 1976 Copyright Act. The appellate court reversed Sotomayor's decision, siding with the freelancers, and the Supreme Court upheld the appellate decision (therefore rejecting Sotomayor's original ruling).
She’s incompetent.
Perfect choice for Obama.
You’d think that a criteria for a SC Judge would be a 6-1 record, not a 1-6 record.
Sotomayor is loser!
Exactly.
Yep, she has all the qualifications Obama requires.
Female
Hispanic
Liberal
Racist
Sexist
L******
Batting .166, She should stay in the minors.
This alone is enough to filibuster her. She’s not SC material.
She is all about identity politics, and not about right and wrong. At the very least, we know what to expect from her.
JoMa
ML/NJ
This woman is not only not fit to sit on the Supreme Court, she should not be a judge siting on ANY Court. She isn’t made of the right fiber. That also includes at least 3 or maybe even 4 members of the current SCOTUS.
No surprise there.
Another site posed these questions which makes one wonder of the logic of Sotomayor in the first place:
1. If you even wanted to, how would you design a firefighter test to make black folks do poorly? How?
2. New Haven is a black-controlled Dem machine. The last thing in the world they want to do there is to discriminate against blacks. It's a ridiculous notion.
Hopefully, she can keep up the record.
Looks like the wisdom of latina wymyn isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
There are many very bright and intelligent Latina women. Sotomayor isn’t one of them.
Alito was 0fer by this nonsense measure.
Oh for how many? I'd be interested to know.
ML/NJ
I think he only had two that he wrote go before the Supreme Court. That of course could mean lots of things itself. But you can make statistics say what you want. If you were going to use this as some proxy for judicial skill, then the total number of cases written by that judge should be the number picked and not the number that went before the Supreme Court. The SC takes cases to overturn them. That is why they have for most of the decade reversed the lower courts 70+% of the time.
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