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News Release
For Immediate Release: May 26, 2009
Contact: Diane Gramley 1.814.271.9078 or 1.814.437.5355

President Obama Fails in Choice of Supreme Court Nominee

(Harrisburg) -- President Obama’s choice of Sonja Sotomayor to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter does not reflect what Americans want in a justice within in the nation’s court system, noted the American Family Association of Pennsylvania (AFA of PA), a statewide traditional values group.

“The American people do not want a judicial activist sitting on the bench, who views our Constitution as a living, changing document. The President has chosen a nominee who will indulge her left-wing policy preferences instead of neutrally applying the law. Obama’s choice of Sotomayor fully exposes how he interprets the United States Supreme Court’s role as one of creating policy, not interpreting the law with our Constitution as a standard. Even though his choice of Sotomayor will not change the makeup of the Court, it does not bode well for potential future nominations,” noted Diane Gramley, president of the AFA of PA.

Judge Sotomayor has repeatedly stated that the courts are where policy is made, although she has recently backed away from those statements, apparently that’s her judicial philosophy in a nutshell. She also has stated that race and personal experience should play a role in legal decision.

· Judge Sotomayor will allow her feelings and personal politics to stand in the way of basic fairness. In a recent case, Ricci v. DeStefano, Sotomayor sided with a city that used racially discriminatory practices to deny promotions to firefighters. The per curiam opinion Sotomayor joined went so far out of its way to bury the firefighters’ important claims of unfair treatment that her colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee, chastised her.

According to Judge Cabranes, Sotomayor’s opinion “contains no reference whatsoever to the constitutional claims at he core of this case” and its “perfunctory disposition rests uneasily with the weighty issues presented by this appeal.” Even the liberal Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen expressed disappointment with the case, stating, “Ricci is not just a legal case but a man who has been deprived of the pursuit of happiness on account of race.”

Sotomayor’s terrible decision in Ricci is under review by the Supreme Court and an opinion is expected by the end of June.

· Sotomayor readily admits that she applies her feelings and personal politics when deciding cases. In a 2002 speech at Berkeley, she stated that she believes it is appropriate for a judge to consider their “experiences as women and people of color,” which she believes should “affect our decisions.” She went on to say in that same speech “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experience would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She reiterated her commitment to that lawless judicial philosophy at Duke Law School in 2005 when she stated that the “Court of Appeals is where policy is made.”

· The poor quality of Sotomayor’s decisions is reflected in her terrible record of reversals by the Supreme Court. Judge Sotomayor has had 5 decisions reviewed by the U.S. Supreme Court, 3 of which have been reversed. In Knight v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue, Chief Justice Roberts stated that her method of reading the statute in question “flies in the face of the statutory language.”

· Sotomayor is a favorite of far left special interest groups. In addition to her record as a hard left judicial activist, Sotomayor has been recommended for the Supreme Court by Nan Aron of the very liberal Alliance for Justice, who stated in a 2004 memo to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Sotomayor had “been through an initial vetting and fit into the criteria that we believe should be the standard for any Supreme Court justice.”

· Sotomayor is not a bipartisan pick simply because Bush 41 appointed her to the district court. President George H.W. Bush nominated Sotomayor in 1991 only because the New York senators had forced on the White House a deal that enabled Senator Moynihan to name one of every four district-court nominees in New York. In 1998, 29 Republican senators voted against President Clinton’s nomination of Sotomayor to the Second Circuit.

Additionally,

· Despite 17 years on the bench, Sotomayor has never directly decided whether a law regulating abortion is constitutional.

· Sotomayor does not believe that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to individuals.

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