N.Y. rulings may loom large in Sotomayor hearing (guns, property rights, felons voting behind bars)

Newsday ^ | 7/11/09 | TOM BRUNE

[Libloather]

N.Y. rulings may loom large in Sotomayor hearing
BY TOM BRUNE
11:03 PM EDT, July 11, 2009

WASHINGTON - Guns. Property rights. Felons voting.

As Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor prepares for her Senate hearings this week, Republicans have talked mostly about her ruling against white firefighters in their discrimination lawsuit against New Haven, and her ties to a Puerto Rican advocacy group.

But Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top GOP member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said they also will ask her about hot-button issues arising from New York cases when that panel's hearings start Monday.

Though less well-known than her remark that she hoped a "wise Latina" would judge better than a white male in some cases, these issues tie into the overarching GOP concern, because, according to Sessions:

"She's written quite a number of things that suggest that she believes her background and beliefs can legitimately impact her decision-making."

**SNIP**

Voting Rights:

Hayden v. Pataki

Joseph Hayden, a black New York City resident serving time in the Otisville, N.Y., prison on felony manslaughter charges, filed a lawsuit in 2000 to overturn a state law barring him from voting.

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund turned his case into a class-action racial discrimination lawsuit, charging that the law violates the federal Voting Rights Act that bars states from imposing conditions that would deny the right to vote "on account of race or color."

A judge rejected the case, and the appeals court upheld the dismissal in an 8-5 vote.

Sotomayor joined another judge's dissent, saying the Act covered the law and the case should go to trial. In a separate dissent, she wrote that it is "plain to anyone reading the Voting Rights Act that it applies to all 'voting qualifications.'

[Libloather]

...she wrote that it is "plain to anyone reading the Voting Rights Act that it applies to all 'voting qualifications.' And it is equally plain that the [New York] law disqualifies a group of people from voting."

She can't be this goofy - can she?

[muawiyah]

Yup, Sonja is that goofy. This is a Democrat version of Judge George Harrold Carswell (remember, the guy who was claimed to be mediocre by Nixon’s Democrat enemies ~ those were the same people who would later vote to commit genocide in Southvietnam ~ and did so).

[HighlyOpinionated]

Yes, she can be that goofy and that hateful toward white males and that arrogant and loud and angry.

She’s NOT quality and not fit to be a judge, much less a judge on the Supreme Court for LIFE.

[HighlyOpinionated]

I just read my own post for the third time and realized . . . 0bama selected her. She’s a mirror image of a part of his personality.

Run for your lives . . . .

[hulagirl]

And what’s up with those bags?? What is she, a boozer or something?!

[Clintonfatigued]

Sotomayor has sustained some damage recently and Americans are becoming more skeptical of her. It’s unlikely to keep her off the Court, but she may be damaged goods when she gets there.

[Salvation]

No to Sotomayor.

[Razz Barry]

But the National Rifle Association and Republicans say the case shows Sotomayor opts for the "most limiting" view of the Second Amendment, and note the usually liberal Ninth Circuit disagreed with her ruling.

This is something I can't understand about gun laws. If local and state governments can restrict Amendment II, why not the others. No one in their right mind would think local and state governments should restrict the First Amendment. If they could, Dalton, Georgia would not have a mosque, people in New York, New York would not get Fox News or Rush...