GOP envisions August Senate vote on Sotomayor

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans cleared the way Thursday for a Senate vote next month to confirm Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, placing her firmly in line to become the first Hispanic justice.

“I look forward to you getting that vote before we recess in August,” said Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, not long before Sotomayor concluded four grueling days in the panel’s witness chair.

If confirmed, she would become the first justice appointed by a Democratic president in 15 years, and one lawmaker prodded her to use her skills to challenge the court’s conservative wing in the years ahead.

“It is my hope that … you’ll use some of those characteristics of your litigation experience to battle out the ideas that you believe in,” said Sen. Arlen Specter, a Republican-turned-Democrat.

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While Sotomayor’s confirmation was assured, Republicans on the committee gave her critics a platform, underscoring the racial subtext of her appointment.

Frank Ricci, a New Haven, Conn., firefighter at the center of a reverse-discrimination case, told the panel that “achievement is neither limited nor determined by one’s race but by one’s skills, dedication, commitment and character.”

Ricci, who is white, was denied a promotion when city officials scrapped an exam, concluding that too few minorities had qualified. His challenge was rejected by Sotomayor and two other appeals court judges in a brief order, a ruling the Supreme Court recently overturned.

Sotomayor has said repeatedly that her panel was bound by precedent, an assertion that was challenged in an opinion by fellow appeals Judge Jose Cabranes, her one-time mentor. On Thursday, she sidestepped pointed questions from Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., who demanded to know what precedents she relied on for the decision.

As for a final vote on her confirmation, Sessions said he would not support any attempt to block Senate action and didn’t believe any other Republican would, either.

Sotomayor, 55, has overwhelming if not unanimous support among the Senate’s 60 Democrats.

In an opening statement delivered on Monday, she pledged loyalty to “the impartiality of our justice system,” a script from which she rarely strayed as she sidestepped questions on controversial issues such as abortion and gun rights.

She stepped lightly, too, around President Barack Obama’s statement that he wanted a justice with empathy. And sought to neutralize critics who asked repeatedly about a 2001 speech in which she said the rulings of a wise Latina would often be superior to those of a white male.

For their part, Republicans picked their way carefully through the questioning, a recognition of the racial politics involved. Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic group in the electorate.

Sotomayor drew praise from Republicans and Democrats alike as she was wrapping up her time before the committee at the nationally televised hearing.

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