By Teresa Puente –

Sonia Sotomayor

History was made today when President Obama nominated the first Latina, Sonia Sotomayor, to become a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.

As Latina women we take pride that she has been nominated to the highest court in the land. She is the daughter of Puerto Rican parents who grew up in a housing project in the Bronx. She grew up reading Nancy Drew and was inspired to be a judge by watching the Perry Mason show.

At the same time because she is Hispanic and a woman she will face even more scrutiny.

The questions are already coming:

Is she qualified?

Is she too liberal?

Will she uphold the U.S. Constitution?

Did they ask these same kinds of questions when Judge John Roberts Jr. was nominated by President George W. Bush to be the U.S. chief justice?

By the way Roberts, who had experience working under President Ronald Reagan, as deputy solicitor general under President H.W. Bush and a Supreme Court clerk, only had two years of experience on the federal appeals court before his nomination.

Look at some of Sotomayor’s qualifications:

-    Attended Yale Law school and an editor at the Yale Law Review.
-    Worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office five years.
-    Worked in private practice eight years.
-    Appointed federal judge for the Southern District of New York in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush.
-    Named an appeals judge for the 2nd Circuit by President Bill Clinton in 1998.

Sotomayor has spent more than 17 years on the federal bench. There’s no arguing she isn’t qualified. The only argument here is over politics and personality.

Republican leader Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Republicans would treat her fairly in the nomination process and they want to ensure “she understands that the role of a jurist in our democracy is to apply the law evenhandedly, despite their own feelings or personal or political preferences.”

Do you think he would mention the word “feelings” had the nomination been a male?

What’s next? Are they going to imply she can’t be fair because she is Latina?

Now the conservatives are going to parse her every word looking for reasons to derail her nomination.

In a 2002 speech she said that personal experiences “affect the facts that judges choose to see.”

She added, “I simply do not know exactly what the difference will be in my judging. But I accept there will be some based on my gender and my Latina heritage.”

I don’t have a problem with that statement. All she is saying is that she may have a distinct viewpoint than a white male that may result in her thinking differently.

This is what happens when you are a minority in the United States. It happens in workplaces around the country. Diversity enriches our society. To say it should have no impact at all in upholding the law is absurd.

If so, then how would we ever have seen Brown vs. the Board of Education, the historic ruling on school segregation?

To use her past statement to question her objectivity as a Latina woman and judicial qualifications is unfair.

She also has been assailed for saying a “court of appeals is where policy is made.”

But we can’t conclude from that she won’t uphold the U.S. Constitution.

Sotomayor said in her confirmation hearing 10 years ago, “I don’t believe we should bend the Constitution under any circumstances. It says what it says. We should do honor to it.”

Her rulings do tell us something about her.

She gained notoriety when she ended the Major League Baseball strike in 1995 by siding with the players.

She ruled in favor of the city of New Haven, Conn., when the city threw out results of a firefighter promotion exam because too few minorities scored high.

And she has ruled against an abortion rights group that challenged the government’s decision to not fund foreign organizations that support abortions.

It doesn’t look to me like Sotomayor is someone who can easily be defined as a strict liberal or a conservative. Her rulings might be criticized by those on both sides.

Sotomayor doesn’t deserve this nomination because she is a woman and Hispanic. That part of who she is shouldn’t be used to question her ability to uphold the law or to be fair.

She deserves this nomination because she is qualified.