Free Republic

Forget Ruth Bader Ginsburg. It is Sonia Sotomayor who is the greatest liberal to sit on the supreme court in my adult lifetime. The first Latina to hold the position of justice, she has blazed a relentlessly progressive trail on the highest bench in the land.

In 1965, then undersecretary of labor Daniel Patrick Moynihan foresaw a problem that was about to undo the promise of Martin Luther King’s 1963 “I have a dream” speech, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and his boss Lyndon Jonson’s 1965 launch of the “Great Society.”In reading her dissenting opinion last week on the affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, I got the distinct impression that Justice Sonia Sotomayor never read Moynihan’s The Negro Family: The Case for National Action, likely never heard of it, and certainly had no idea of how prescient it would prove to be.Despite the...

FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) – The U.S. Supreme Court issued a decisive 8-1 ruling in favor of Kentucky Attorney General, Daniel Cameron on Thursday, according to a news release from the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General. The ruling allows Cameron to continue to defend House Bill 454 (HB 454), which is Kentucky’s law outlawing live-dismemberment abortions. After hearing the court’s ruling, Cameron issued the following statement:

When a progressive loses on Politifact, they’ve lost completely. That’s where intellectually challenged Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor is right now as conservatives pile on the ridicule and leftists distance themselves from her lack of knowledge regarding Covid-19. Here’s just a small sampling of the disinformation she shared during Friday’s Supreme Court oral arguments over the OSHA vaccine mandates, as reported by Cristina Laila from The Gateway Pundit: During oral arguments on Friday, Supreme Court justice Sonia Sotomayor falsely claimed that over 100,000 children are in serious condition because of Covid. “Many are on ventilators,” Sotomayor said.

Liberal New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow claimed over the weekend that the U.S. was "edging closer" to another civil war. In a Saturday op-ed, Blow argued that the ongoing debate over Texas' recently passed abortion law, and the invoking of former Vice President John C. Calhoun by Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, reminded him of the debate over states' rights and slavery, both of which Calhoun was a proponent, in the decades leading up to the American Civil War. A key component of women’s rights and body autonomy is being snatched away as we watch," Blow wrote, referencing...

Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing rebuke of the court's decision to allow the Trump administration to enforce its "public charge" rule in the state of Illinois, limiting which non-citizens can obtain visas to enter the U.S. Sotomayor's problems with the conservative majority's ruling went far beyond this case, claiming that it was symptomatic of the court's habit of siding with the government when they seek emergency stays of rulings against them. "It is hard to say what is more troubling: that the Government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that...

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a blustering dissent in an ideologically split 5-4 Supreme Court ruling released Friday night in which she accused the five conservative justices who voted in the majority of repeatedly favoring the Trump administration. The case involved an appeal by the Department of Homeland Security for an injunction in a ruling against the imposition by the administration of a “public charge rule” regarding immigrants in an Illinois case that the Court has already allowed for the other 49 states. (DHS fact sheet on public charge rule.) Sotomayor’s dissent is in the context of the growing pushback...

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez continued to defend herself against claims promoted by Donald Trump, Jr. and others that she changes her accent to pander to minority audiences. In a string of Saturday evening tweets, the first-term Democrat wrote that her habit of "code-switching" was informed by years of navigating professional and social environments as a woman of color. "Next time you‘re told straight hair is 'unprofessional' and that speaking like your parents do is 'uneducated,' then you can complain about code-switching," she wrote, referring to the practice of changing speech patterns based on environment. "Code-switching is a tool communities...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that newly appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh is already like “family.” Sotomayor recently sat down with David Axelrod, for an episode of CNN’s “Axe Files” that will air Saturday, and spoke about welcoming in the new justice. Kavanaugh was confirmed after a highly publicized Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September. He was accused by Professor Christine Blasey Ford of sexual assault in the 1980s when they were both teenagers. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the accusation and was eventually confirmed with a 50-48 vote in the Senate. Sotomayor said among Supreme Court justices, typically a lifetime appointment,...

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by her colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg, went bigger and wrote an eloquent version of the “Are you f---ing kidding me?” reaction ... "The majority holds otherwise by ignoring the facts, misconstruing our legal precedent, and turning a blind eye to the pain and suffering the Proclamation inflicts upon countless families and individuals, many of whom are United States citizens. Because that troubling result runs contrary to the Constitution and our precedent, I dissent" ...

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor told college students in New York City that she sometimes feels “great turmoil” inside when she is hearing arguments on the bench, but works hard to keep her emotions and personal biases in check. […] “You can’t do human activity — and judging is a human activity — without having human emotions,” she told the crowd at the LeFrak Concert Hall. “The sense of how you deal with it is to acknowledge it. I look at it, examine it, try to figure out the effect it’s having, and then try to adjust my behavior...

Tuesday’s Supreme Court ruling that Michigan voters had the right to ban racial preferences in university admissions didn’t sit well with the court’s self-described “Wise Latina,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Her 58-page-long dissent made clear that she’ll be the last line of defense for affirmative-action policies at the highest court in the land. But a look at the dissent as well as her own history, makes clear that the lady doth protest too much. Immigrants and their children simply have no claim on affirmative action — if anyone does. To the contrary, these policies hurt their intended beneficiaries. The court didn’t...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says she doesn't expect a radical change in the current makeup of the Supreme Court over the next several years, even after the nomination of Neil Gorsuch by Donald Trump. (Video clip at link source)

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Tuesday that Americans “can’t afford to despair” in the wake of Donald Trump's election as president. Speaking to an audience at a Capitol Hill cultural center, Sotomayor said the nation can’t afford for a president to fail, but stressed that “every person has an obligation both to continue being heard and to continue doing the right thing.” The justice was responding to a question from radio host Bill Press about whether Trump’s victory made her feel apprehensive. She declined to answer directly, but said people “can’t afford to give up on pursuing the values...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor says the nation’s highest court needs more diversity in personal background and professional experience. […] The court’s first Latina justice says she feels there’s “a disadvantage” to having a court made up entirely of Ivy League graduates who are either Catholic or Jewish, several of them from New York. She notes that none specialized in criminal defense outside white-collar settings. …

In a dispatch on King v. Burwell, the closely watched Obamacare challenge, NPR’s Nina Totenberg observed that the plaintiffs’ attorney, Michael Carvin, argued before the Supreme Court with “red-faced passion.” Indeed, Justice Sonia Sotomayor hadn’t even finished the preamble to her first question when Carvin interrupted her to finish an earlier thought. He then caught himself and apologized, at which point Sotomayor tempered him: “Take a breath.” Carvin needed that moment, because Sotomayor was about to ask a bombshell question about federalism, a subject that later dominated a key portion of the hearing.

Associate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor flatly rejected on Monday the view that any U.S. Supreme Court justices practice judicial activism. Speaking Monday to a standing-room only event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., the 60-year-old justice was asked to give her reaction to those who complain about judicial activism on the one hand, yet want the Court to declare laws unconstitutional on the other. "I think most judges have a definition of judicial activism," Sotomayor said. "It’s a ruling you don’t like."Sotomayor’s assertion that no judicial activism exists — an article of faith...

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor rejected on Sunday the notion that alternatives to affirmative action such as income or residency could achieve similar results in diversifying the nation’s colleges and universities. […] Sotomayor is the first Hispanic on the Supreme Court and graduated from Princeton University. She said her alma mater could fill its freshman class with students who scored perfectly on undergraduate metrics, but it chooses not to do so because it would not create a diverse class based on standards the school considers important for success in life. …

Justice Sonia Sotomayor Defends Affirmative Action BY ROBERT BARNES June 22 Justice Sonia Sotomayor said she supports affirmative action in higher education because she believes that alternatives based on geographic or economic status don’t work to ensure a diverse student body. Sotomayor has said race-conscious programs in the 1970s that opened Ivy League schools to minorities were essential to her rise from the Bronx public housing projects to her admission to Princeton and Yale Law School, where she excelled. Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina, was asked by George Stephanopoulos in a segment taped for ABC’s “This Week” about programs that...

My mving to Washington and becoming a Supreme Court justice five years ago was shocking, “like somebody throwing cold water on me,” says Justice Sonia Sotomayor. The transition from being a little known appeals court judge in her hometown of New York to being an easily recognized Washington personality was extremely difficult, Sotomayor said. “People stop treating you like a person,” she said. “It’s hard for someone like me who really likes people and wants to have living room conversations that are not posted on Twitter.” Her comments came in a wide-ranging and, for a Supreme Court justice, unusually candid...