Here are Sotomayor's notable opinions- neatly explained.

[cali]

Sotomayor’s Notable Court Opinions and Articles
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Updated: May 27, 2009

Racial Discrimination
Judge Sotomayor's most high-profile case, Ricci v. DeStefano, concerns white firefighters in New Haven who were denied promotions after an examination yielded no black firefighters eligible for advancement. Joining an unsigned opinion of a three-judge panel of the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor upheld the rejection of a lawsuit by white firefighters, one of them Hispanic, claiming race discrimination and, as part of the full appeals court, she declined to rehear the case. The Supreme Court is currently considering the case, and Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is the likely swing vote. Among the questions in the case is whether the law should treat diversity in the work force differently from diversity in the classroom. Judge Sotomayor dissented in part in an earlier case, Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education, finding that race discrimination had occurred when a school demoted a black child from first grade to kindergarten.
“The school did not give the black student an equal chance to succeed (or fail).”

—Dissent in Gant v. Wallingford Board of Education, 1999

Related Documents
Ricci v. DeStefano (2008)
Top
Lawsuits Against Federal Contractors
An opposition memo on Judge Sotomayor cites her ruling in a case about lawsuits against federal contractors to claim that she is "willing to expand constitutional rights beyond the text of the Constitution." The case concerns an inmate who lived in a fifth-floor room while serving a federal prison sentence for securities fraud. He was allowed to use the elevator because of congestive heart failure, but when a guard had him climb the five flights, he had a heart attack, fell down the stairs and suffered an injury. He sued the company that ran the halfway house for the federal Bureau of Prisons. As part of the appeals court, Judge Sotomayor emphasized precedents that permitted suits against companies performing state government functions. The Supreme Court reversed Judge Sotomayor, ruling 5 to 4 that only individual agents, not corporations, may be sued for such violations. Justice Stevens - joined by Justices Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer - dissented.
“Extending Bivens liability to reach private corporations furthers overriding purpose: providing redress for violations of constitutional rights.”

(Bivens was a 1971 Supreme Court case that allowed some people whose rights have been violated by federal agents to sue.)

—Makesko v. Correctional Services Corporation, 2000

Related Documents
Makesko v. Correctional Services Corporation
Top
Environment
In a defeat for environmental groups, the Supreme Court ruled this term that the Environmental Protection Agency may use cost-benefit calculations to decide whether to require power plants to make changes that could preserve aquatic organisms. The case mostly concerned the meaning of a phrase in the Clean Water Act that requires the power plants' cooling structures to "reflect the best technology available for minimizing adverse environmental impact." Judge Sotomayor had previously ruled that weighing the costs of the changes against the value of the organisms in dollars was not permitted by the law. Instead, the EPA could consider only what cost "may reasonably be borne" by the power plants. When her ruling was overturned by the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and David H. Souter, dissented, saying that cost-benefit analysis was prohibited by the law and pernicious in practice.
“Congress has already specified the relationship between cost and benefits in requiring that the technology designated by the EPA be the best available.”

—Riverkeeper v. Environmental Protection Agency

Related Documents
Riverkeeper v. Environmental Protection Agency (2007)
Top
Workplace Discrimination: Disabilities
Some of Judge Sotomayor's more prominent opinions on discrimination concern people with disabilities. In one case, Judge Sotomayor ruled that a law school graduate with a reading and learning disability was entitled to extra time in taking the bar exams. After the Supreme Court decided that people are not protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act if they can function normally by wearing glasses, taking medication or otherwise compensating for their disabilities, it told the Second Court to reconsider its decision in this case. Judge Sotomayor again found that the woman was disabled, and must be given accommodations, writing that test scores alone were not enough to diagnose a disability. Another case concerned a trucking company that rejected applicants who were taking some medications. Judge Sotomayor dissented from the majority, writing that Hunt, the company, had determined the applicants were "substantially limited in the major life activity of working," and not, as the, majority found, merely "unsuited for long-distance driving of Hunt's 40-ton trucks on irregular stressful schedules."
“By its very nature, diagnosing a learning disability requires clinical judgment.”

—Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners

Related Documents
Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners (1999)
E.E.O.C. v. J.B. Hunt Transport (2003)

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http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/05/26/us/0526-scotus.html

more cases at the link as well as Senate JC questionnaires from 1992 and 1997.

[Raine1967]

1. It is interesting that the cases that were overturned by the Supreme Court

had the more liberal Judges dissenting.

I like her. She seems level headed. Thank you so much for this!

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

2. The New York Times?

Are we supposed to believe that rag?

[cali]

3. read and judge for yourself

I think this is informative and helpful in figuring out what kind of jurist Sotomayor is.