Sotomayor first voted as an associate justice of the Supreme Court on August 17, 2009 in a stay of execution case. [213] She was warmly welcomed at court[214] and formally invested in a ceremony on September 8. [215] Sotomayor`s first case in which she heard arguments took place on September 9 at a special session, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. These were the controversial aspect of the First Amendment and corporate campaign finance rights; [216] Sotomayor disagreed. [217] [218] In his vigorous investigation of Floyd Abrams, who represented First Amendment issues in the case, Sotomayor challenged him to highlight 19th century court decisions. “What you`re suggesting is that courts that created companies as people produced businesses as people, and it could be argued that this was the mistake of the court. [imbues] a creature of state law with human qualities.” [216] [219] President Obama appointed Sotomayor on the day of his confirmation,[204] and his swearing-in ceremony took place on August 8, 2009, at the Supreme Court building. 1957) later became a physician and university professor in Syracuse, New York. [15] [16] In this historic vote, the Senate confirmed that Justice Sotomayor has the intelligence, temperament, history, integrity and independence of mind to serve on our country`s highest court. It is a role that the Senate has played for more than two centuries, helping to ensure that the equality of justice before the law is not just a sentence that stands above the door of our courthouse, but a description of what happens every day in the courtroom. On January 20 and 21, 2013, Sotomayor Vice President Joe Biden was sworn in to inaugurate his second term. Sotomayor was the first Hispanic and the fourth woman to swear allegiance to a president or vice president.
[228] On January 20, 2021, Mayor Kamala Harris was sworn in for her inauguration as vice president, the first woman to hold the position. [229] Sotomayor was the first Supreme Court justice appointed by President Barack Obama, who had taken office the previous January. The election of a Hispanic woman by the nation`s first non-white president provoked a backlash that set the tone for their confirmation hearings. In particular, a comment she made in 2001 that “a wise Latin woman with the wealth of her experiences” was better qualified than “a white man who didn`t live this life” angered her opponents. Nearly every Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee — all were white men — raised the comment during questioning, while pundits speculated about Sotomayor`s impartiality, even accusing him of being racist. Yet it was easily confirmed by a Democratic majority and nine of the 40 Republicans in the Senate. More than a decade after taking office, Sotomayor became the voice of liberal conscience at Roberts` conservative court. She voted with the majority in the landmark 2015 ruling that lifted the ban on same-sex marriage. She has spoken out against challenges to the Affordable Care Act and opposed efforts to dismantle campaign finance regulations. Sotomayor was involved in the high-profile case Ricci v. DeStefano, who initially confirmed the City of New Haven`s right to abandon its test for firefighters and begin a new test because the city believed the test had a “patchwork effect”[150] on minority firefighters.
(No Black firefighters were eligible for promotion to the test, while some qualified for tests used in previous years.) The city was concerned that minority firefighters could sue under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The city decided not to certify the test results, and a lower court had previously upheld the city`s right to do so. Several white firefighters and a Hispanic firefighter who passed the test, including the principal plaintiff, who suffers from dyslexia and went the extra mile in college, sued the city of New Haven, claiming their rights had been violated. A Second Circuit panel, which included Sotomayor, initially issued a short, unsigned summary order (not written by Sotomayor) upholding the lower court`s decision. [151] Sotomayor`s former mentor, José A. Cabranes, now a judge of the Court, objected to this practice and asked the Court to hear him in a bench. [152] Sotomayor voted 7-6 not to be retried and a slightly expanded judgment was rendered, but strong opposition from Cabranes led to the case reaching the Supreme Court in 2009. [152] There she was overturned in a 5-4 decision that found that white firefighters had been racially discriminated against when they were denied promotion.
[153] And as I said, if confirmed, Sonia Sotomayor would become the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. But some have suggested that another judiciary might deserve the honor. Sonia Sotomayor was born in New York City on June 25, 1954. She grew up to become the first Hispanic Supreme Court justice in the United States. Today, sitting on the nation`s highest court, she is an inspiration to other Latino and Hispanic children in the United States. In court, Sotomayor took a stand for a broader view of the Fourth Amendment on privacy, search and seizure. [245] [246] In United States v. Jones (2012), the nine judges agreed that an arrest warrant was likely needed before police could attach a GPS tracking device to a suspect`s car.
Most justices agreed with a narrow view of Justice Samuel Alito, but Sotomayor (in one agreement) advocated a broader view of privacy rights in the digital age and called for a reassessment of long-standing third-party doctrine: “It may be necessary to reconsider the premise that an individual has no reasonable expectation of confidentiality. that are voluntarily disclosed to third parties. [247] The following year, federal judge Richard J. Leon cited this agreement in his decision that the National Security Agency`s massive collection of Americans` phone records likely violated the Fourth Amendment. [247] Law professors Adam Winkler and Laurence Tribe were among those who said Jones` approval influenced the need for a new basis for understanding privacy requirements in a world where she wrote “where people disclose a lot of information about themselves to third parties as part of mundane tasks.” [247] In Missouri v.
