Sotomayor Recalls Confirmation Attacks as Jackson Vote Nears

Justice Sonia Sotomayor recalled feeling hurt when she was attacked as not smart enough for the Supreme Court on her way to becoming the first Latina justice.

Appearing at Washington University in St. Louis on Tuesday, the justice spoke as the Senate prepares to vote this week on the confirmation of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who’s set to become the court’s first Black woman justice amid Republican opposition.

“When I was being nominated, people said that I wasn’t smart enough to be on the Supreme Court,” the Obama appointee said as she mingled through the audience, which she often does during speaking engagements.

“That hurt me,” Sotomayor said. “Cut me to the quick.”

The justice proceeded to rattle off her resume full of Ivy league education and judicial experience at the time of her high-court nomination, prompting laughter in the audience.

“It felt like, what’s enough? And when is it enough?” Sotomayor said.

“The reality is, that for some people,” she said, “you’re a minority, particularly one from New York, they believe that affirmative action opened the door for you. They forget that you don’t judge a person by who opens the door. You judge them by what they did when they went through the door,” she said to audience applause.

The high court will hear a pair of affirmative-action cases next term that could end the practice. Jackson, who earned undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard and has served on its board of overseers, said, if confirmed, she intends to recuse from one of the appeals which involves the university.

When she was nominated in 2009, Sotomayor was criticized for previously saying she hoped “that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.”

On Tuesday, during her response to a question about advice for young women of color who want to serve on the high court, Sotomayor said “there’s nothing that’s handed to you in life, whether you’re a woman of color or anybody else.”

She later added that “sometimes, people of color, they expect more of us. We’re not given a lot of slack at moments. The mistakes we make are sometimes highlighted a lot more than others’.”

But the justice said “it doesn’t give us an excuse not to put our heart into working as hard as we can to achieve what we want.”