Sotomayor's Work For Puerto Rican Org A Lingering Question

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund (PRLDEF), on whose board of directors Sonia Sotomayor sat for a dozen years, urged strongly against the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork to the SCOTUS, according to materials released today by the Senate Judiciary Cmte.

In one passage about the Fund's '87 activities, then-PRLDEF Pres. Linda Flores writes that the Fund officially opposed Bork's SCOTUS nomination "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the legal community." The document says that Fund attys "prepared press releases and worked on numerous efforts to build coalitions against the nominee," but Sotomayor's work as a board member to formulate that position and execute those actions are unclear.

Bork was rejected by the U.S. Senate following a contentious confirmation process, and his name has since become synonymous with efforts to thwart nominations to the nation's highest court.

The documents also revealed that PRLDEF was involved in a handful of employment discrimination cases similar to Ricci v. DeStefano, the New Haven, CT, firefighter case on which the SCOTUS ruled Monday.

In that case, a majority of Sotomayor's prospective SCOTUS colleagues reversed a decision she had joined on the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals, ruling that the city violated fed. law and discriminated against white and Hispanic firefighters by throwing out promotion test results because none of the dept.'s African-American firefighters passed the exam.

In the documents, the Fund listed a number of cases in the mid '80s in which they sided with minority individuals or groups representing minorities alleging Title VII racial discrimination against municipalities regarding employment examinations. But, like the Bork nomination -- outside of vague board meeting minutes -- there is no indication what role, if any, Sotomayor played in the litigation of these cases.

In one case, the Fund represented the Hispanic Society against the NYC Sanitation Dept. The Fund claimed that the first-level exam used for hiring of sanitation supervisors had "a severe disparate impact upon Hispanic test-takers." Hispanics, they said, passed the exam at a 37% rate, while whites passed at an 83% rate.

In another case, the Fund brought a class action suit against the NYPD in '84, claiming the sergeant's exam the dept. administered was "discriminatory and not job related." A settlement was reached with the NYPD that allowed nearly 100 Hispanics to be promoted, more than twice the number that would have been promoted before the settlement. A group of non-minority officers appealed to the SCOTUS, but their claim was denied on procedural grounds (Marino v. Ortiz, '88).

According to the documents, the Fund also participated in a '83 SCOTUS decision -- Guardians Assoc. v. NYC Civil Service Commission -- that held that seven police-officer exams given by NYC between '68-'70 "had a disparate impact upon minorities" and were not job-related.

The Fund's pres. and general counsel, César Perales, told the AP yesterday that Sotomayor was simply on the litigation board of the Fund and didn't participate in cases. He said she set broad policy and guidelines.

"She was on the board of directors, she was not a member of the legal staff," Perales said, "so she was not directly involved in the legal arguments that we presented. Her role was to help us raise funds, set policy, hire the person who would run the organization."

The documents submitted yesterday also detail the Fund's activity in other political participation, housing discrimination and language discrimination cases.

A letter sent by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking GOPer on the Judiciary Cmte, last week stated that he was aware that 300 boxes of documents related to the Fund's activities during Sotomayor's tenure on the board are housed at the non-profit's headquarters in NYC. A Judiciary Cmte spokesperson said roughly 350 pages of documents released today on the cmte's website represented all they have received thus far from the Fund. A Fund spokesperson did not immediately return a call for comment.

(STEVEN SHEPARD)