Rejecting the identity politics of the like of Sotomayor, the Supreme Court today overturned the decision of the Second Circuit panel, on which Judge Sotomayor sat, which upheld a lower courts decision to allow the city of New Haven to throw out the results of a hiring test for firefighters because no blacks qualified for promotion.  This decision in Ricci, et al. v. DeStefano, et al. is a blow against the kind of racist identity politics pushed by Obama and Sotomayor, and a victory for the rule of law.

Ilya Shapiro:

This ruling is the latest in a series of steps the Court has taken to strike down race-conscious actions that violate individual rights—and thus is a blow both to the Obama administration (which sided with the city in Ricci) and to the nomination of Judge Sotomayor. Those who bring cases before the courts deserve much more than empathy or even “sympathy”—the word Justice Ginsburg uses in her dissent—they deserve equal treatment under the law.

Jonathan Adler on what this means for Sotomayor:

The length of the Supreme Court’s opinions (a 34-page majority, 39-page dissent, and two concurrences) is evidence that the case raised difficult and weighty issues. It reinforces the position of Judge Sotomayor’s colleagues who criticized the panel’s initial disposition and, on their own initiative (and without the filing of a petition for rehearing en banc), sought full court review of the case. Yet even if her handling of this case reflects poorly on her judgment, I do not see it as disqualifying, and I do not believe it will prevent her from being confirmed.

And finally, Alito’s concurrence rejects the “empathy” approach (from page 13 of full decision):

Petitioners were denied promotions for which they qualified because of the race and ethnicity of the firefighters who achieved the highest scores on the City’s exam. The District Court threw out their case on summary judgment, even though that court all but conceded that a jury could find that the City’s asserted justification was pretextual. The Court of Appeals then summarily affirmed that decision.

The dissent grants that petitioners’ situation is “unfortunate” and that they “understandably attract this Court’s sympathy.” Post, at 1, 39. But “sympathy” is not what petitioners have a right to demand. What they have a right to demand is evenhanded enforcement of the law—of Title VII’s prohibition against discrimination based on race. And that is what, until today’s decision, has been denied them.

Check SCOTUSBlog for more analysis.

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