Schumer: Sotomayor to stand by her words

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a defender of president Obama’s Supreme Court
nominee Sonia Sotomayor, said
Sunday that she will stand by a controversial speech when she pays courtesy visits
to senators this week.

The GOP has been inflamed by a 2001 speech in which she said that a “wise Latina”
would make a better decision than a white male. White House spokesman Robert
Gibbs last week conveyed her regrets over the speech by saying that she made a
poor choice of words.

{mosads}But Schumer, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committe who is going to shepherd Sotomayor on her
Senate visits this week, stressed that she should be judged on the entire
speech in which “she makes it clear that rule of law comes first.” 

“I think she will stand by the entire speech. I think that she will show
that the speech when you read it says rule of law comes above experience,”
Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week.”

However, Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), the GOP Senate Campaign Committee
chairman and a key member of the Judiciary Committee, did not appear ready to
accept Sotomayor’s conveyed regrets over the choice of words in her 2001
speech. But he refused to say whether Republicans in the Senate plan to
filibuster the nominee and stressed that Republicans won’t pre-judge the nominee.

Another high-ranking Republican on the Judiciary panel, Jon Kyl (Ariz.),
refused to answer whether he thought Sotomayor was a racist – a label given by
the right.

“I do not know any Republicans in the Senate calling her a racist,” Kyl said
on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday. He said he would not “get drawn” into any kind
of characterizations before he even meets the nominee.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) charged that “the epithet of a racist is a
terrible thing to throw around,” and would add a “visceral” heat to the debate
over the nominees. Feinstein, also a member of the panel, argued on “Face the
Nation” that what Sotomayor said in her speech “is not the right thing to say,
but I don’t think she meant it that way.”

But while Republicans will parse Sotomayor’s words and question her on her
judicial philosophy, they will also zoom in on her ruling in a reverse
discrimination case in New Haven, Conn.

The debate over her judicial philosophy could come down to a 132-word
summary order in Ricci vs. DeStefano, which upheld the decision of New
Haven, Conn., to throw out the
promotion test it had given city firefighters when no African-Americans and two
Hispanics qualified for advancement. The white firefighters and one Hispanic who brought the
suit have said that they were denied the promotions they earned because of the
color of their skin.

What Republicans are focusing on is that the scant order by a unanimous
three-judge panel that included Sotomayor was devoid of legal reasoning for
affirming the decision of a lower district judge.

The case is under review by the Supreme Court that Sotomayor would join. The
high court’s ruling would likely come at the end of June, just as the Senate will
consider Sotomayor’s qualifications.