High court slaps down Sotomayor

George Will writes about the Supreme Court's decision in the Ricci case.

Although New Haven's firefighters deservedly won in the Supreme Court, it is deeply depressing that they won narrowly -- 5 to 4. The egregious behavior by that city's government, in a context of racial rabble-rousing, did not seem legally suspect to even one of the court's four liberals, whose harmony seemed to reflect result-oriented rather than law-driven reasoning.

The undisputed facts are that in 2003, the city gave promotion exams to 118 firefighters, 27 of them black. The tests were prepared by a firm specializing in employment exams and were validated, as federal law requires, by independent experts. When none of the African Americans did well enough to qualify for the available promotions, a black minister allied with the seven-term mayor warned of a dire "political ramification" if the city promoted from the list of persons (including one Hispanic) that the exams identified as qualified. The city decided that no one would be promoted, calling this a race-neutral outcome because no group was disadvantaged more than any other.

Isn't this so damn typical of the left? Instead of trying to find a way to genuinely elevate the under performing black firefighters (and by elevate I don't mean arbitrarily adding points to their score to make up for "past discrimination" but developing an educational program to help them study and learn and earn a place on the promotion list) they employ the left-liberal's favorite tactic of dragging down the achieves to the level of the lowest common denominator so that an illusion of equality can be maintained and no one has to feel bad about themselves.

Will goes on to discuss the opinions filed by the different Justices particularly Antonin Scalia's contention that ". . . Monday's ruling 'merely postpones the evil day' on which the court must decide 'whether, or to what extent,' existing disparate-impact law conflicts with the 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection under the law."

That day is coming and is a large part of the reason why we must work to elect men and women who are not only conservative but have the courage and character to endure the most severe criticism from the mainstream media and the beltway establishment.

This ruling by the High Court is yet one more humiliating reversal for Sandra Sotomayor and provides conservatives with yet more ammunition to oppose her elevation to the Supreme Court. However Obama, a Marxist with a bitter hatred of the United States, will only seek another like-minded person to fill the current vacancy on the Court so Republicans will not be able to relax.

Remember we are just six months into the Obama regime and we have three and a half years to go.