Thread: Group Sotomayor belonged to sued over job tests

Group Sotomayor belonged to sued over job tests

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, The Associated Press
9:19 p.m. July 3, 2009

WASHINGTON — A civil rights group advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor in the 1980s brought several discrimination lawsuits that sought to scrap the results of job tests because too few Hispanics scored well, according to new documents that are fueling GOP criticism of the judge.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities. The case unfolded as Sotomayor chaired the organization's board of directors' litigation committee, although there is no evidence that she had any role in the group's decision to participate in the lawsuits, or in formulating or drafting any of their legal arguments.

Still, the case bears strong similarities to a much-discussed case Sotomayor ruled on last year as a federal appeals court judge, which involved the reverse discrimination claims of white firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who sued after the city threw out its promotion test because too few minorities qualified. A panel she joined ruled against the white firefighters in the case, Ricci v. DeStefano. The Supreme Court reversed the decision last Monday.

The sanitation workers' case and similar ones – including a series of lawsuits against the New York City Police Department that ultimately resulted in the department consulting with a PRLDEF expert in drafting its job tests – are detailed in hundreds of pages of new material the group sent the Senate Judiciary Committee on Friday. The documents were placed on the committee's web site.

The job discrimination suits, which are a staple of most minority legal advocacy groups' work, have drawn outrage from Republicans who allege they prove that Sotomayor has endorsed an agenda of reverse discrimination and racial preferences for minorities.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary panel, said this week that the Puerto Rican defense group has taken "extreme positions," and his office branded the organization "activist" in a background memo it released on Friday. His aides had accused Sotomayor's allies of withholding the documents to prevent a thorough investigation of her past before confirmation hearings begin July 13.

Democrats call the group, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, mainstream, and argue that most of the material has nothing to do with Sotomayor.

"Before this request, we already had a more public and complete picture of Judge Sotomayor than for previous nominees," Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary chairman, said in a statement. "This well-respected civil rights advocacy organization has cooperated and made an extensive effort to review decades-old records, most of which have no connection to Judge Sotomayor, to provide even more information to the committee,"

The materials give little insight into Sotomayor's role in the organization's activities, even while she chaired the board's litigation committee. They do suggest, however, that Sotomayor and other board members were involved in making sure the cases PRLDEF handled were in keeping with its mission statement and were having an impact, according to a memo she wrote in June 1987.

The document said the board had asked the litigation committee she chaired to address "case development and litigation strategic planning," as well as the fund's mission statement and the structure of its legal department. But there's no mention in the voluminous files of what the committee ultimately recommended on those topics, and no sign that Sotomayor ever weighed in on any specific case or issue.

In addition to the job discrimination lawsuits, the material details cases PRLDEF handled on Hispanic voting suppression, bilingual education and housing, among others. In one such suit, Puerto Rican residents sought to stop the establishment of a rental community in Brooklyn for predominantly white, low-income elderly tenants on the grounds it wasn't being made available to the area's mostly minority residents.

The documents also reveal that PRLDEF joined a coalition of civil rights group to lobby Congress to override a 1989 Supreme Court decision that made it more difficult for people to prevail in job discrimination suits. In 1991, Congress passed legislation that essentially nullified the case's precedent. Many legal analysts believe the recent Ricci ruling again created new barriers to such suits.

Some civil rights leaders have expressed alarm at Sessions' intense focus on Sotomayor's time at PRLDEF, suggesting that it indicates that he's unfairly targeting her because she's Hispanic.

Sessions has "been extraordinarily consistent in his disdain for civil rights and equal opportunity. I don't know of very many prominent Latino or minority lawyers or judges who haven't been involved in civil rights sometime in their lives," said Antonia Hernandez, a former president of MALDEF, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. "It's a message that's being sent to minorities and Latinos that you cannot participate and be involved in the civic life of your community if you ever want to attain a position like this."
––––
Associated Press Writer Sharon Theimer contributed to this report

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/ ... dex=126257

Sotomayor is a Hispanic supremacist. Her comment about "someone who has not lived that kind of life"--if typical of her--insults every Asian, African or Caucasian who has also had to overcome poverty.

The Judiciary Committee needs to kill her nomination and put an end to this bad choice.

Dixie

My understanding is that her nomination is still proceeding. The Judiciary Committe will only need to get one Republican vote to get her nomination out of Committee and to the Senate Floor. Although it would take no more than the seven Republicans holding together in Judiciary to filibuster her nomination. Will they do it? Sessions would, and perhaps Grassley and Coburn.. But there is still Kyl, Hatch, Graham, and Cornyn. Got a lot of them to work on! Keeping her out, assuming they would then nominate a more neutral justice, could undo some of the liberal disasters of previous Courts.

I email all seven of them with my thoughts. Maybe someone could find some really shocking news.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities



You know, if I were a minority I think that I would be extremely upset and offended by this kind of claim.

Seriously, one of the biggest racial prejudices which needed to be overcome was the belief......or at least assertion.....that minorities were not as smart and capable as whites, that somehow race and intellect were linked, rendering minorities inferior in intelligence.

So, now along comes these alleged "advocates" for minorities making ridiculous claims that minorities and whites cannot possibly take the same tests and examinations because it puts minorities at a disadvantage?

Their own advocates are saying, in effect, that they are of inferior intelligence to whites, for God's sake

You're so right, it's outrageously supremacist.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities

Maybe the test was in English only.

"Maybe the test was in English only."

Exactly.

Hispanic Rights Group at Center of Sotomayor Fight

Saturday, July 11, 2009 4:40 AM

NEW YORK -- Cesar Perales has fought his share of critics over the years, in legal battles for minorities denied jobs, bilingual classes in schools and more Latino police officers.

But none of those efforts compares with the tempest his Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund has stirred because of the dozen years that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor served as one of its board members.

Conservatives have called the group's stances against capital punishment and for abortion rights, as well as its advocacy of affirmative action in worker discrimination cases, "extreme" and "shocking." Some have suggested Sotomayor's longtime association with the group is an indication that she is biased and would be unable to render impartial decisions as a Supreme Court justice.

The critiques leading up to next week's Senate hearings on Sotomayor's confirmation have stunned Perales, who calls them an attempt to derail her nomination by over-politicizing the work of his legal defense fund.

"You have a reputable group that has stood up for the civil rights of Latinos for 37 years," said Perales, the group's president. "To suddenly be accused of being something bad, and that anyone associated with it should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court, to me is shocking."

Perales founded the fund, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, in a Manhattan office building in 1972, He modeled it after one of the most high-profile civil rights organizations in the country, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

The group points to suits like Aspira vs. New York City Board of Education as among its biggest accomplishments, forcing city schools to implement bilingual education for non-English speaking students.

Another suit against the city's police department brought about an increase in the number of Latino officers in the police force. The group mounted a successful legal challenge in 1981 that postponed city elections over concerns about redistricting.

Sotomayor held leadership roles on the legal defense fund's board from 1980 to 1992, starting soon after she graduated from law school and began working, leaving it when she became a federal judge. Perales has described her role as helping with fundraising and setting policy and said she was not directly involved with the group's legal arguments and activities.

In that period, the group brought several lawsuits in which minority workers claimed discriminatory treatment that kept them from jobs or promotions.

Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, used the word "extreme" to describe the PRLDEF's views on capital punishment and race.

"This is a group that has taken some very shocking positions with respect to terrorism," Sessions said, citing the legal defense fund's defense in 1990 of Puerto Rican nationalists who 36 years earlier had wounded five lawmakers during an attack on the U.S. House of Representatives.

Sessions' Senate aides also raised concerns about the legal defense fund's ties with the community activist group ACORN, an organization embroiled on voter registration disputes with Republicans.

Perales said his group and ACORN were associated in one lawsuit that dealt with low-income tenants, an area of interest for both organizations.

"We're not ashamed of that. If we're going to be involved in helping poor people, we're obviously going to have contact" with other groups that work in that area, he said.

A coalition of 25 Hispanic organizations recently sent Sessions a letter expressing concern at PRLDEF's portrayal. Mayor Michael Bloomberg weighed in with a statement of support.

"While we have not always agreed on every issue, the group has made countless important contributions to New York City," Bloomberg said this week.

Republican senators have questioned whether Sotomayor's work with PRLDEF might have influenced her decision to join two other judges in dismissing a discrimination suit by white New Haven, Conn., firefighters who claimed they were denied promotions because of their race.

The Supreme Court last month reversed that decision by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges.

The case bears similarities to a case PRLDEF brought on behalf of Hispanic New York City sanitation workers who sought to stop white employees from getting promotions, arguing that the promotion exams unfairly disadvantaged minorities. Sotomayor chaired the board's litigation committee at the time.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., questioned whether the Sotomayor's decision in the firefighters case showed "favoritism for particular groups."

Perales said PRLDEF's primary function has been to use existing law to work toward ensuring equal opportunity.

Some people "think Latinos ought not avail themselves of their rights," Perales said. "I interpret what is going on as really amounting to Latinos don't have a right to form a civil rights organization and they don't have a right to bring lawsuits to protect their interests."


http://www.newsmax.com/politics/us_soto ... 34405.html

Originally Posted by azwreath

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund represented Hispanic sanitation workers in New York City who wanted to stop white employees from getting promotions because, they argued, the qualifying exam unfairly disadvantaged minorities



You know, if I were a minority I think that I would be extremely upset and offended by this kind of claim.

Seriously, one of the biggest racial prejudices which needed to be overcome was the belief......or at least assertion.....that minorities were not as smart and capable as whites, that somehow race and intellect were linked, rendering minorities inferior in intelligence.

So, now along comes these alleged "advocates" for minorities making ridiculous claims that minorities and whites cannot possibly take the same tests and examinations because it puts minorities at a disadvantage?

Their own advocates are saying, in effect, that they are of inferior intelligence to whites, for God's sake

You couldn't be more right about that, azwreath! And you can thank Sharpton and Jackson for the oppression of their own race. Dr. Alan Keyes would agree with you totally. He was suppose to be the first black President and would have wipped the entitlement mindset.