Lady Justice is peeking

What follows is the oath of office taken by each Supreme Court Justice:

"I, [NAME], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me as [TITLE] under the Constitution and laws of the United States. So help me God."

What follows is an excerpt of a speech give by Judge Sonia Sotomayor. In 2001, she gave the keynote speech at “a symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the first judicial appointment of a Latino to a federal district court.” The text of the speech was later published in the La Raza Law Journal.

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life...I simply do not know exactly what that difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage."

I could just stop here and my point would be well made but that's not really my style. One has to ask how many times has Judge Sotomayor used her "Latina heritage" as a basis for dispensing justice. How often has the fact of her race played a role in her decisions? One would hope never but that doesn't seem to be the case for this particular judge. She is sensitive to issues of race in her decisions as is evident in a case just decided by the court she hopes to sit on. In fact, her earlier ruling was overturned by the SCOTUS oddly enough.

Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act states:
"Title VII of the Act prohibits discrimination by covered employers on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin." In simple terms, an employer may not use race as a basis for hiring or promotion. This means either to the positive or to the negative.

The Ricci v DeStefano case is obvious proof of her sensitivity to matters of race. It seems that not enough black firefighters passed a test for promotion given by the New Haven CT Fire Dept. and she summarily dismissed the promotions of white and Latino candidates who had passed and were due promotion but in this day of racial quotas and reverse profiling the Second Circuit Court Of Appeals ruled this way,

"We affirm, for the reasons stated in the thorough, thoughtful, and well-reasoned opinion
of the court below. Ricci v DeStefano. In this case, the Civil Service Board found itself in the unfortunate position of having no good alternatives. We are not unsympathetic to the plaintiffs’ expression of frustration. Mr. Ricci, for example, who is dyslexic, made intensive efforts that appear to have resulted in his scoring highly on one of the exams, only to have it invalidated. But it simply does
not follow that he has a viable Title VII claim. To the contrary, because the Board, in refusing to
validate the exams, was simply trying to fulfill its obligations under Title VII when confronted
with test results that had a disproportionate racial impact, its actions were protected."

Put simply, the Civil Service Board's bogus claim of a violation of Title VII trumps Ricci's valid claim. Put another way, they seem to acknowledge that Mr. Ricci is the most qualified candidate but since no blacks passed then neither will he. It's also important to note here that the court never says the test itself had a "disproportionate racial impact"...just the outcome. There were no claims that the test wasn't fair.They said only that the outcome basically doesn't look right to them. Of the 41 applicants who took the captain exam, eight were black; of the 77 who took the lieutenant exam, 19 were black. While it's true that no black applicants passed, quite a few white applicants failed as well. Only the three highest scores could be accepted based on New Haven's promotion policy. The idea that a test can have a "disproportionate racial impact" for firefighters is ludicrous. How can race have any bearing on how a fireman does his job? What it really means is that the Second Circuit just didn't like the outcome. They thought more black applicants should have passed. So much for the content of Ricci's character, apparently only his skin color counts to Judge Sotomayor.

Here's the kicker though. It seems New Haven had already thought ahead on matters of discrimination and attempted to nip any possible future recriminations in the bud. It seems that New Haven paid $100,000 to a high stakes diversity testing firm, IO Solutions, Inc. of Illinois, to design the exams to be completely free of any racial bias. This is a necessary step these days in order to avoid charges of disparate impact upon protected minority groups -- and New Haven does have a large population of protected minority groups.
IO Solutions, Inc. is one of a few dozen firms which specializes in this kind of politically correct test design, and they are very good at it. According to court filings, IO Solutions "did everything right in designing the New Haven fire department's promotional exams to be completely race-neutral, i.e., to not have a disparate impact upon selected, preferred skin colors."

So who do we believe? A firefighter who worked hard and studied extensively to pass an exam he knew would have a huge impact on his future or a Judge who thinks that skin color is a perfectly acceptable measure for determining outcome so long as that skin color is not white?

It seems open and shut to me and probably to most of you as well but Judge Sotomayor finds no error in her thinking regarding this decision. While it might have been whispered in the past that our justice system is not exactly blind, it's obvious now that with Judge Sotomayor sitting on the court the statue of Lady Justice will have to have her blindfold altered slightly so she can peek out to see if there are any people of color in line for the court.