Did Precedent Make Sotomayor Rule Against Ricci?
Judge Sonia Sotomayor has not defended her most widely criticized decision — the one rejecting a discrimination lawsuit by 17 white firefighters, and one Hispanic, against the city of New Haven, Conn. — as a just or fair result. That would have been an uphill battle: Polls in June showed that huge majorities of the public wanted the Supreme Court to reverse Sotomayor’s decision. And as I’ve explained elsewhere, although the Supreme Court split 5-4 in ruling for the firefighters in Ricci v. DeStefano, all nine justices rejected the specific legal rule applied by Sotomayor’s three-judge panel. That rule would allow employers to deny promotions after the fact to those who did best on any measure of qualifications — no matter how job-related and racially neutral — on which blacks or Hispanics did badly. Instead of defending her panel’s quota-friendly rule and its harsh impact on the high-scoring firefighters, Sotomayor and her supporters have argued that she essentially had no choice.
