Word: cases
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...After law school, Sotomayor worked for five years in the office of Manhattan district attorney Robert Morgenthau, where she prosecuted everything from petty drug crimes to felony assaults and murder. No less than her background in the projects, her experience pressing criminal cases may have affected her outlook years later on the bench. One case she presided over, U.S. v. Falso, seemed likely to go against police who had charged a man with possessing child pornography after they entered his house on a wrongly issued search warrant. Instead, Sotomayor ruled in favor of the officers. "It wasn't just...
...Haven Case...
...Sotomayor's involvement in an affirmative-action case last year is the episode attracting the most attention. The case, Ricci v. DeStefano, involves a group of 18 white firefighters, including one Hispanic. They filed a discrimination suit against the city of New Haven, Conn., after the city decided in 2004 not to certify the results of a job-promotion exam because no African Americans had scored high enough to be promoted. The city argued that federal law treats tests resulting in such outcomes as suspect, meaning that New Haven would probably have been sued by the minorities who failed...
...lower court decided in favor of the city. In February 2008, Sotomayor was part of a three-judge panel that upheld the lower-court decision in a very brief ruling. Four months later, she was part of a 7-6 majority that decided not to rehear the case before the full appeals court. Writing for the six dissenters, Judge Jose Cabranes, a Clinton appointee who has been something of a mentor for Sotomayor, said the majority "failed to grapple with the questions of exceptional importance raised in this appeal." The three-judge panel's "perfunctory disposition," he wrote, contained...
...That case is now before the Supreme Court, which heard arguments last month. On that day, both Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. and Justice Scalia indicated that they believed New Haven officials were concerned only about the test's failure to produce a desired outcome. When a lawyer representing the Federal Government told Roberts that the government would have supported tossing out the exams if the results of blacks and whites had been reversed, the Chief Justice raised a skeptical eyebrow, and Scalia said, "I don't think you'd say that." Gregory Coleman, an attorney representing the firefighters, told...