Sotomayor sidesteps Hatch questions

Sen. Orrin Hatch tried Tuesday to corner Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor into revealing her personal beliefs on gun control and to admit errors in a reverse-discrimination case. She would do neither.

But Hatch, R-Utah, did get her to repudiate possible attempts by supporters to smear a litigant in that reverse-discrimination case, where Hatch contended Sotomayor had made errors. The supporters had planned to testify in her confirmation hearings later this week.

"I would never, ever endorse, approve or tolerate — if I had any control over individuals — that kind of conduct. It's reprehensible," Sotomayor said.

Hatch spent much of his time questioning Sotomayor about whether her court decisions show she does not believe that the right to bear arms is firm and fundamental. Hatch contended she has ruled that the right to bear arms does not apply to state and local governments and they can ban or restrict guns if they choose.

However, Sotomayor said her holdings "were based on precedence," or previous decisions of her circuit court and the Supreme Court to which she was bound to follow.

But Hatch still asked if her rulings meant that "virtually any state or local weapons ban would be permissible."

Sotomayor sidestepped the direct question, noted that Hatch was talking mostly about a narrow case that dealt with New York banning nunchuks and not guns, and noted that New York had adopted rational reasons for banning them for public safety.

She acknowledged that standards in her weapons-case decisions do allow a government to "remedy a social problem that it is identifying … not in the most narrowly tailored way but in one that reasonably seeks to achieve that result."

Hatch also said he believed Sotomayor had erred in a reverse-discrimination case brought by firefighters in New Haven, Conn., who contended a promotion test was unfairly discarded because not enough minorities would be advanced based on its results — even though minorities helped design it.

Hatch said Sotomayor and two other judges improperly adopted reasoning of the lower court without full enough review and should have seen that it raised some legal questions for the first time that should have been reviewed by the full circuit court.

Sotomayor simply noted that other judges also agreed with her and did not concede that she made errors.

Hatch concluded in his questioning of her, "I think it's important for you to know how I feel about these type of cases. … These are important cases. These are cases where people are discriminated against."

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