Sotomayor: Serious Complaints That Aren't

First, the Ricci case. The complaint is that she allowed the city of New Haven to throw out a firefighters' promotion test that showed clear favortism (not intentional) toward white applicants. The clear implication is that she threw it out to allow blacks and Hispanics to gain an advantage over whites. In reality she clearly followed the law, the EEOC rulings, and court precedents. Hilzoy does the leg work here.

Second, the complaint she's been overturned by the Supreme Court an inordinate number of times. RBC has the goods on this score. The 2nd circuit court, where Sotomayor serves, has a reversal rate of around 75%. Of the opinions that Sotomayor has written the rate is 60%. She's better than the court average. They also point out that SCOTUS only takes the cases that they think are questionable to begin with resulting in a high overturn rate of those cases. The circuit courts have to take everything appealed to them. The total number of opinions that have never been reviewed, in essence upheld by default, is significantly higher than the number reviewed.