another one bites the dust

Well, it would appear as though another one of Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s cases was overturned by the Supreme Court. For those keeping score at home, that five cases of hers reversed by the Supreme Court and two upheld, though in one of those upheld cases, the Supreme Court unanimously faulted Judge Sotomayor’s reasoning. But, apparently, in our Glorious President’s new administration, a 71% (or 86%, depending on how you count it) failure rate is good enough to get you to the Supreme Court. Hell, I guess she is about as good as an average baseball player…
Oh, and the case in question? Basically, a fire department had promotion exams. No black firemen passed the exam, and only two hispanics passed the exam. The fire department’s answer? Throw out the exam and promote no one. The white firemen who passed the exam rightfully sued, but the District Court in question dismissed the suit before it even went to trial. The case then moved up to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, where Sotomayor and the other two judges unanimously affirmed the lower court’s decision. The Supreme Court turned around and indicated that intentionally discriminating against one group (the white firemen, or the firemen who passed the test – however you want to look at it) is not permissable, even if it was done in order to avoid potentially discriminating against another group.
On the other hand, our probably-next Supreme Court Justice believes that discriminating against white men is perfectly acceptable, even if the white men in question passed an exam that everyone had to take. After all, we cannot allow whitey to gain the upper hand, can we? And neither should performance be a metric when it comes to things like promotions, right? Apparently the four Justices who dissented against this recent Supreme Court decision feel the same way… the good news is that Judge Sotomayor will be replacing one of those morons.