It is commendable that Sotomayor admitted that what she said was wrong and that it was not her intent, but on the case that involved the firefighters who were denied a promotion because minorities performed poorly and the white firefighters performed well, Ricci v. DeStefano, I question her judgment. For those who do not recall, her ruling on this case, which was that the city was legally justified in denying the promotions based on poor minority performance, was overturned by the Supreme Court. The problem I have with the ruling is that it looked at the “effects” of the test, particularly the written portion which was the area where minorities performed poorly, instead of the test itself. Let me be clear: a written test cannot be racially biased unless there is some racial or ethnic component to it, i.e. if there are white-only nursery rhyme lyrics that minorities do not know about. The English language should not be regarded a “racial” component. I am Hispanic. I speak English and Spanish fluently. During my entire period in school, the English language was not an obstacle and I tested, across the board, very well in all subjects. If little old me (a minority) can do this, any minorities can do this, it’s called studying. Here she is answering the question:

She says that the city could decide to deny the promotions if they believed that they could come up with a “better” test that would not show such disparities. This is absurd. In other words, the city can decide to change the test in order to skew the results in whatever direction they want in order to stave off some potential lawsuit. What about performance or qualification? The problem here with her ruling and the law in general is that it judges the fairness of the test by the outcome and not by the actual composition of the test. This means that if it was “Cuban Heritage Day” or something like that the day before the test and all of the Cuban-American test-takers were not well rested and performed poorly, then the government could re-administer the test just so that the hard-partying Cuban-Americans could get better scores. Is this fair to those who studied and were responsible? [I use Cuban-Americans as an example because I am Cuban-American] It is absurd that “disparate impact” is used to judge the validity of an inherently neutral written test. Sotomayor showed either that she blindly ruled using precedent without reviewing the facts or that she actually believes that justice is best served by judging outcome and not the neutrality of the test. Given that she considers herself to not be a “robot,” using her words, she probably falls in the latter category… which means something much more troubling for America: her interpretation of equal justice before the law focuses on outcome, not opportunity. American “equality” has never meant that all Americans must have “equal outcomes” in life, or “equal outcomes” between social classes, but rather that every American be given “equal opportunity.” The concept of “equal outcome” is the fundamental basis of socialism and, its stricter form, communism. The concept of “equal opportunity” is the fundamental basis of the American Dream.

So when I wrote before that Sotomayor figured into the larger conflict being played out in America between socialism and freedom, her own opinion, which holds that laws that promote equal outcome are what serve America best, makes my point. I wholeheartedly disagree with this vision of a socialist America, and therefore wholeheartedly disagree with her confirmation. Unfortunately, the complexity of this issue and the mainstream media focus on her being a woman and a Hispanic will not relate to the American public the grave threat to democratic values that she represents. Modern society teaches us a very important lesson here: abundance of meaningless information is as dangerous to democracy as the utter lack of information. Her race, ethnicity, and gender are meaningless with respect to the position she seeks. We need to remember that.

-AG