[Grovenet] FYI - "Was Sotomayor Reversed, or Did the Supreme Court Change Course?"

[Allen Warren]

If we're using basic words to convey the outcome of the Supreme Court decision, i.e. "Was Sotomayor's vote on the three member judicial panel reversed?" then a correct statement is indeed that Sotomayor was reversed, *BUT*, as you and others have so clearly stated, Sotomayor was practicing judicial responsibility by upholding the prevailing law at the time she made her decision.  The problem remains there will be some people who simply do not read past Headlines, and for those publications that have an anti-Sotomayor bias, they know some readers will read the Headline and be pleased that what they believe to be true, i.e. Sotomayor being a liberal activist, has been verified.
 
Allen Warren


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From: Bob Browning <rab at jurislex.com>
To: Grovenet <grovenet at rdrop.com>
Sent: Wednesday, July 1, 2009 11:18:16 AM
Subject: [Grovenet] FYI - "Was Sotomayor Reversed, or Did the Supreme Court Change Course?"

Here's a little heads up the next time your conservative pundit tells you that Sotomayor was reversed (never mind that she was only one person on a three member judicial panel that voted 2 - 1 to uphold the District Court decision!). Talk about your activist judges!!

bob "never been reversed" browning
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ABA Journal - Law News NowU.S. Supreme Court 
Was Sotomayor Reversed, or Did the Supreme Court Change Course?
Posted Jun 30, 2009, 06:21 am CDT 
By Debra Cassens Weiss 
Headlines proclaiming the reversal of a federal appeals court ruling by U.S. Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor are off the mark, according to a journalist who has covered the high court.
In a New York Times op-ed, Linda Greenhouse writes that the Supreme Court changed course when it ruled Monday on behalf of white firefighters. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the court said the city of New Haven, Conn., erred when it threw out a fire department promotional exam because no blacks got top scores.
“Like that decision or hate it, cheer Monday’s ruling or deplore it, one thing that is clear from reading the Supreme Court’s 89 pages of opinions in the case is that Judge Sotomayor and her colleagues played by the old rules, and the court changed them,” Greenhouse writes. “Although ‘Sotomayor Reversed’ was a frequent headline on the posts that spread quickly across the Web, it was actually the Supreme Court itself that shifted course.”
The op-ed notes the 1971 Supreme Court decision Griggs v. Duke Power, which held that an employment test can violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act if it is “fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.” Congress later amended Title VII to codify the decision. The amended law said job requirements producing a “disparate impact” on minorities had to be justified with a showing of actual necessity.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s majority opinion in yesterday’s case announced a "strong basis in evidence standard” in disparate impact cases.
"We conclude that race-based action like the city’s in this case is impermissible under Title VII unless the employer can demonstrate a strong basis in evidence that, had it not taken the action, it would have been liable under the disparate-impact statute," Kennedy wrote.


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