Sonia Sotomayor Free Speech

The opinions of Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice in U.S. history, holds loyal to the law. Known as being a moderate with liberal tendencies, she is also a strong advocate for the first amendment. Nominated by President Barack Obama, Sotomayor was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in August 2009 by a vote of 68 to 31. Sonia was born to Juan and Celina Sotomayor on June 25, 1954 in the South Bronx area of New York City. The Puerto Rican family lived off a “very modest income,” with Sonia’s mother being a nurse and her father a “tool-and-die worker” (Biography.com Editors). According to the NY Daily News, Sonia Sotomayor’s dream about what she wanted to be when she grew up was fueled by Nancy Drew stories. As a girl who was

Sotomayor sided with the individual [the First Amendment] only five times, or a mere 26.3 percent” (Batkins). While the numbers seem shocking when specifically discussing the First Amendment, this does not necessarily indicate that Sotomayor is against free speech. More commonly, the judge is referred to as a “strong defender of First Amendment free speech rights,” as called by the Alliance for Justice in the Scripps Howard Foundation Wire. The article goes on to mention that “the Congressional Research Service said it could not ‘discern a particular ideology’ from her decisions” (Elliot). Sotomayor’s strong attention to detail is also mentioned here, connecting it as the “only visible pattern in the First Amendment cases” (Elliot). Sotomayor’s attention to detail and strong beliefs of upholding precedent is the foundation of her opinions. The statements made by Batkins, assist in showing Sotomayor’s evolution through her career. Sotomayor’s opinion regarding the First Amendment has strengthened over her service in the

Giuliani (2002) and Brenes v. City of New York (2009), two public-employee cases. Sotomayor filed a lone dissent in Pappas v. Giuliani, a case where the New York Police Department fired Thomas Pappas, one of its IT employees who had no contact with the public, for “engaging in racially bigoted behavior outside of work. On at least two occasions Pappas responded to charitable donation solicitation from the Mineola Auxiliary Police Department by stuffing reply envelopes with offensive racially bigoted materials and returning them anonymously” (Supreme Court Review Reporter). While Sotomayor agreed with the decision, her opinion on why was different than the majority opinion. In this dissenting opinion, Sotomayor makes it clear that although the particular speech used was “offensive, hateful, and insulting,” … “The Court should not, however, gloss over three decades of jurisprudence and the centrality of First Amendment freedoms in our lives because it is confronted with speech it does not like and because a government employer fears a potential public response that it alone precipitated” (Pappas v. Giuliani). This in turn shows evidential support of Sotomayor’s judicial ideology towards free speech. Pappas was offensive and insulting, and his employers had the right to fire him due to their policies. In regards to free speech, speech that is rejected due to fear of potential bad