CQ TODAY PRINT EDITION
– LEGAL AFFAIRS
June 23, 2009 – 1:25 p.m.
Republicans Turn Up Heat on Sotomayor
By Seth Stern, CQ Staff
Senate Republicans sharpened their rhetorical attack Tuesday on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, raising concerns about her work for a Latino advocacy group.
Jeff Sessions , R-Ala., said Sotomayor has done “extensive work” for the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, an organization he said is “clearly outside the mainstream of [the] American approach to matters” and “has taken some very shocking positions with respect to terrorism.”
Sotomayor worked with the public interest legal organization, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, between 1980 and 1992, serving as a member and president of its board of directors.
Founded in 1972, the group was modeled on the NAACP and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund and has been involved in lawsuits regarding bilingual education, employment discrimination, school desegregation, and voting rights.
Last week, Sotomayor provided the Judiciary Committee with a handful of additional memos and other documents from the organization during her tenure. Sessions and Patrick J. Leahy , D-Vt., the chairman of the committee, subsequently wrote to Latino-Justice PRLDEF requesting additional documents regarding Sotomayor’s work.
“We don’t have enough information, unfortunately, to assess these concerns effectively,” said Sessions, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.
Sessions noted that the group had come to the defense of Puerto Rican nationalists who attacked a House session in 1954, wounding five representatives, prompting then-New York Mayor David Dinkins to refer to them as “assassins” in 1990.
Leahy said Republicans were trying to “mischaracterize her involvement with respectable, mainstream civil rights organizations.”
Earlier in the day, Leahy offered a more pointed rebuttal of the GOP floor speeches.
“I understand, I’ve seen a lot of the fundraising letters and I understand they have their orders from the head of their party, Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Gingrich, and so they have to do that,” Leahy said.
The tone of Sessions’ comments contrasted with his floor remarks last week, the first in a planned series of high-minded speeches addressing the proper role of judges.
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell , R‑Ky., and John Cornyn , R-Texas, who is on the Judiciary Committee, also spoke Tuesday about Sotomayor’s nomination on the Senate floor.
Both Cornyn and McConnell focused on a reverse-discrimination lawsuit filed by a group of Connecticut firefighters, which the Supreme Court is expected to rule on within the next week.
Sotomayor was one of three judges on a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit who upheld a trial court’s ruling rejecting the reverse discrimination claims by a group of white firefighters in the case, Ricci v. DeStefano.
“The court’s decision, I believe, will tell us a great deal about whether Judge Sotomayor’s philosophy . . . is within the judicial mainstream or well outside of it,” Cornyn said.
Republicans reiterated concerns about whether they will have enough time to prepare before Sotomayor’s confirmation hearing, which is scheduled to begin July 13.
“It’s going to be difficult to be as prepared as we’d like to be when this hearing starts,” Sessions said.
Off the floor, Sessions said he wasn’t sure when Republicans might decide whether to seek to delay the hearing or filibuster the nomination.
“I don’t know. Pretty soon,” Sessions said. “I would just say that this is a tight schedule.”
Leahy said the confirmation hearing has to begin July 13 to ensure a Senate confirmation vote on the nomination before the August recess.
Leahy might agree to a short delay of the confirmation hearing — perhaps for one week — if Republicans agreed to forswear procedural delays after the hearing. But Leahy signaled that Republicans are not ready to make that kind of deal.
“They’re unable to give that kind of agreement, so we have to start when we do,” he said.
Separately, a group of Latino lawyers and law enforcement officials joined Sen. Robert Menendez , D-N.J., to defend Sotomayor’s criminal law record.
Art Acevedo, national president of the National Latino Peace Officers Association and chief of police in Austin, Texas said Sotomayor is “fair and impartial.”
Bart Jansen and Keith Perine contributed to this story.
Comments
Judge Sotomayor has done no more than Justice Roberts did as as advocate for conservative issues, yet the repubs did not complain about his ability to be fair. The Republicans, especially Senator Sessions and others like him, will say and do anything to defeat this nomination so as to defeat Obama. These prevayors of "no" should take heed that the "good ole boy" system is on its death bed, and that no matter how loud their objectons are to change, in the end change will come.
It's time to quit playing softball with these racist wing nuts like Jeff Sessions and show them who won the election.
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