Legal Group Reveals Little On Sotomayor
A Puerto Rican civil rights organization advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor campaigned against seating conservative Robert Bork on the high court in the late 1980s, according to new documents that shed light on the group that's become a key focus of Republicans questioning Sotomayor's fitness to be a justice.
The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund officially opposed GOP nominee Bork in 1987, "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the Latino community," its president reported in one of several documents from the group that the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday. The 350-plus pages of material offer little evidence about Sotomayor's role in the cases and causes the organization, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, took up while she served on its board from 1980 until 1992.
The disclosures catalog a wide range of discrimination lawsuits the group took up on behalf of Puerto Rican and other Hispanic minorities including in the areas of voting, employment, housing and education. But the documents; including minutes from board meetings Sotomayor attended while serving on the board and chairing its litigation committee; reveal no direct role by the federal appeals court judge in any of the cases or policy positions the PRLDEF took during her service there.
Republicans have criticized Sotomayor's participation in the group, which they say has taken radical positions and sought to gain racial preferences for Hispanics. They argue that her ties to the group, taken together with Sotomayor's statements about how her heritage shapes her views as a judge, raise doubts about whether she can be an impartial, colorblind justice.
Democrats counter that the group is a mainstream civil rights organization whose advocacy on behalf of the racial minority it represents is entirely appropriate.
Sotomayor's allies also argue she had no direct role in the cases the fund handled while she was on its board, even while chairing the board's litigation committee in the late 1980s. The documents reveal virtually nothing about the federal appeals court judge's role on that panel.
Minutes from an Oct. 1987 meeting quote Sotomayor as saying the committee is looking at past and present litigation efforts and "potential areas of emphasis" for the future, but the documents don't list any specific cases or issues she personally worked on.
GOP attorneys on the Judiciary Committee are scrutinizing the material for any hint of bias it might reveal about Sotomayor. They point to the organization's opposition to Bork and its ties with the community organizing group ACORN, embroiled in voter registration complaints, as evidence that the group had a political agenda.
A summary of the group's 1987 activities reflects that it worked with ACORN to represent low-income Puerto Rican families in East New York who were banding together to ensure affordable housing in their area.
Democrats, meanwhile, were working to paint Sotomayor as a mainstream judge whose record runs counter to GOP charges that she's a liberal activist. Senate leaders circulated quotes from legal analysts saying that she follows precedent and shows restraint in her rulings.