Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, accused Sotomayor of being prejudiced.
Citing a controversial racial bias case in which a fire department discarded the results of a qualifying test when black firefighters scored too low, Sessions said Sotomayor was biased in favor of the minority employees.
"It seems to me that in [Ricci v. DeStefano], Judge Sotomayor's empathy for one group of firefighters turned out to be prejudice against the others," Sessions said.
Ricci v. DeStefano was just one of Judge Sotomayor's cases to be overturned by a higher court - in this case the Supreme Court of the United States.
Sotomayor's controversial attitudes towards race were first aired when it became clear that her comments about "wise Latinas" were a common refrain in her public speeches:
I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life.
A picture of my cave
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