Sotomayor's Links With Advocates Fuel Her Critics

[Thrill]

In the 1980s, the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund sued the New York City Police Department, claiming that its promotion exams discriminated against Latinos and African-Americans.

The fund, one of the advocacy groups pressing similar cases across the country, also helped redraw voting districts in the city that increased the number of Hispanic elected officials. The defense fund even sued a former Reagan administration official for defamation after he claimed that virtually all Puerto Ricans in New York received food stamps.

All those efforts were backed by the defense fund’s board of directors, an active and passionate group that included a young lawyer named Sonia Sotomayor, who this week was chosen by President Obama to join the country’s highest court.

Ms. Sotomayor’s involvement with the defense fund has so far received scant attention. But her critics, including some Republican senators who will vote on her nomination, have questioned whether she has let her ethnicity, life experiences and public advocacy creep into her decisions as a judge. It seems inevitable, then, that her tenure with the defense fund will be scrutinized during her confirmation hearings.

Curt Levey, executive director of Committee for Justice, a conservative legal group active in judicial nominations, said that “while it’s fine to let your Puerto Rican heritage influence — or any heritage for that matter — influence your positions when you’re on a board, it’s quite a different story when you’re a judge, and I wonder whether she knows the difference.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29puerto.html?ref=politics

This is part of about 3 hit pieces the NYtimes is running tomorrow. One is as silly as her not voting a couple times

[FrenchieCat]

1. New York Times is outdoing itself on this one!

[bottomtheweaver]

2. This is good news.

I hope this is a sign of things to come as I really haven't heard too much about her yet. I imagine she'll be deciding lot of immigration issues and a strong advocate on the bench is what's needed.