Saturday, May 30, 2009

Where does Sonia Sotomayor stand on reproductive choice?

RHRealityCheck.org had a link to this L.A. Times article that describes Sonia Sotomayor's unclear record on freedom of reproductive choice. Here's another RHRealityCheck post on Sotomayor, which discusses both her record on reproductive choise, and her judicial record in general.
She sticks to the rule of law, respects precedent and writes thoughtful and reasoned opinions. She was nominated to the federal district court by George H.W. Bush. Her decisions are left-leaning insofar as she generally seeks to protect Constitutional rights by supporting religious freedom and free speech, and she often sides with the plaintiffs in discrimination cases - hardly "activist" material. But she's not a liberal dream by any stretch. She has some bad First Amendment cases to her name (Doninger v. Niehoff, where she sided with a school that disqualified a student from running for senior class secretary after the student posted a vulgar school-related message on her blog), and some bad Fourth Amendment ones (United States v. Howard, where she held it was constitutional for state troopers to entice suspects away from their cars in order to allow other troopers to search the vehicles for drugs). Those cases, though, are the exceptions rather than the rule; generally, Sotomayor follows a fairly consistent Constitutional philosophy, and errs on the side of maintaining rather than limiting rights.

No comments: