Opinion: Sotomayor hearings: She didn’t follow her heart
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Sen. Charles Schumer, in his effort to show that Judge Sonia Sotomayor uses her head, not her heart, raised one of her previous cases, Pappas vs. Giuliani. The case involved a police officer who was fired for sending racist and anti-Jewish leaflets through the mail.
The case, said Schumer, involved “a repugnant litigant.”
And yet … although the court upheld the firing of the officer, Sotomayor dissented, saying the termination violated his right to free speech.
“You wrote that the literature was patently offensive and insulting,” said Schumer. “But you also noted the employee’s right to free speech had to be respected.”
Sotomayor agreed. “That’s what I believe. …The 1st Amendment commands we respect people’s rights to engage in hateful speech.”
Added Schumer, “We could do this all day long -- where sympathy, empathy would be on one side, but you found rule of law on the other side, and you sided with rule of law. To me, analyzing a speech and taking words maybe out of context doesn’t come close to analyzing the cases as to what kind of judge you will be.”
And, indeed, Schumer proceeded to go on, if not all day long, then for his allotted time, to describe her cases, not her speeches.
-- Robin Abcarian
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