Was Sotomayor's overturned ruling really radical?

June 30, 10:39 AMPolitical Buzz ExaminerRyan Witt

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Judge Sotomayor waits on capitol hill.  AP Photographer Harry Hamburg

As I predicted in an earlier post republicans have quickly used the recent Supreme Court decision regarding the New Haven twenty to try and radicalize President Obama's Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor.  To recap the decision handed down by the Supreme Court yesterday upheld the rights of a group of largely white firefighters who argued the town of New Haven should not be able to throw out the results of a test administered for promotions.  The test had yielded results that generally favored the white firefighters fro promotion over other minorities.  The town of New Haven was attempting to do away with the test results but the Supreme Court invalidated that decision.  Sotomayor in her time on the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had supported the town's decision in a judicial opinion.

In the story from CNN, republicans praise the supreme court for upholding equal rights while making it seem as though justice was done in overturning Sotomayor's extreme and unfair ruling.  There are a couple of problems with the republican claim.  

First, the decision reversing Sotomayor's ruling was accomplished with a 5-4 vote on the Supreme Court's bench.  It is not as if all nine judges on the court looked at Sotomayor's ruling and said "this lady is crazy what was she thinking."  No, instead four of the best legal minds in the country actually agreed with her decision our of nine sitting justices.  It is not as if Sotomayor is some lone extremists making decisions with no legal support behind her.

Secondly, and perhaps most damning to the republican claim, the Supreme Court decision in New Haven twenty case actually overturned EXISTING law on the subject.  Therefore Sotomayor, in her ruling, was actually upholding the laws of the land and precedent as it existed at the time.  This hardly sounds like a radical judicial activists to me.  The job of judges on the Supreme Court is to overturn existing law in rare circumstances when justice demands but judges in Sotomayor's former place of employment are simply suppose to follow existing precedent of the time from higher courts.  So this claim that Sotomayor went off on some ledge and sided with minorities because of her bleeding-heart liberal empathy simply holds no weight.