The Supreme Court vs. Sotomayor

Andrew M. Grossman / June 29, 2009

The chief complaint with Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s handling of Ricci, the New Haven firefighters case, is not that her court reached the wrong result but that it shirked its duty to give the case its full consideration, in an obvious attempt to bury it.

That effort, of course, did not work, and the Supreme Court released an elegant decision in the case by Justice Kennedy, who hints at the strangeness of Sotomayor’s handling of the case. His description:

After full briefing and argument by the parties, the Court of Appeals affirmed in a one-paragraph, unpublished summary order; it later withdrew that order, issuing in its place a nearly identical, one-paragraph per curiam opinion adopting the District Court’s reasoning. Three days later, the Court of Appeals voted 7 to 6 to deny rehearing en banc, over written dissents by Chief Judge Jacobs and Judge Cabranes. (more…)