Friday, June 19, 2009 5:58 PM
Senate Committee Holds Briefing On Ricci Case
The Democratic Policy Committee held a briefing yesterday on the Ricci v. DeStefano case. According to a White House official, this is part of a regular series of briefings the committee is holding on some of Sonia Sotomayor's key cases. (The source would not elaborate on which other cases will be addressed.)
NationalJournal.com has learned that two experts spoke at the hearing. One was Austin Schlick, counsel of record for the State of Maryland on an amicus brief filed by six states on behalf of the City of New Haven in the Ricci case. The second, University of Michigan law professor Richard Primus, sent a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday addressing the anti-discrimination issues -- specifically, equal protection and disparate impact -- that are at stake in Ricci.
Primus has been researching Ricci's legal implications for years. Sotomayor's nomination has simply made this issue more important to more people, he said in an interview. "I had some contact with the White House before I wrote the letter," Primus said. "But I also told them that I was going to write a letter with my views. So, the letter is from me." He would not comment on the details of the briefing or whether he has continued to be in contact with the White House since sending the letter.
In the letter, Primus said that the courts' rulings -- the district court's decision ruling in favor of the City of New Haven, the appellate three-judge panel affirming the lower court's ruling and the full court's refusal to rehear it -- should not be surprising. "It's an issue that's politically controversial, but it's not controversial legally. Legally, it's an easy issue," Primus said. "The complicated thing is that the Supreme Court is probably going to change the law on it, which means that even though it wasn't a complicated issue before, it's going to look like all the judges who decided it got it wrong. It's not going to mean that. The judges made the decision, and then the court changed the rule."
The Supreme Court is set to hand down its decision on Ricci the end of this month.
Lil
Saturday, June 20, 2009
What a crock of ____. Primus really knows how to shovel it. It is the panel of three Clinton-appointed liberals that adopted the ruling of a Clinton-appointed liberal activist and these activists were the ones that "changed" the law. Does either the district judge or Sotomayor cite a SINGLE U.S. Supreme Court precedent for this radical ruling, described by half the judges of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals as "path-breaking"? NO. All of the numerous Supreme Court holdings on governmental use of race are unequivocal and crystal clear - constitutional strict scrutiny applies. Yet these activists, while acknowledging that race governed the decision of the government to deny those firefighters the promotions, refused to apply strict scrutiny. If the Supreme Court rules in the firefighters' favor, they will not be "changing" the law, as Primus dishonestly suggests. The Court will only have overturned defiant liberals who brazenly defied the Supreme Court's jurisprudence with which they disagree. No amount of s--- shoveling by Primus and other Democratic operatives with a law degree will change that.