Judge's Votes Show No Single Ideology

Like much of her writing, which often relies heavily on legal precedent, the dissent was cast in blunt, unemotional language.

Roger Clegg, president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, criticized the result. "To say this is all part of a giant conspiracy to keep African Americans and Latinos from voting is absurd," he said in an interview.

Kevin Russell, one of a group of lawyers the White House has put forward praising Sotomayor's record, said that her position is "controversial" but that "it would be unfair to characterize it as showing a judge who disregards the law or engages in judicial activism."

Equally controversial among conservatives is a 2000 decision in which Sotomayor backed African American plaintiffs from a small town in New York. The case stemmed from an assault on an elderly woman who could not identify her assailant but said he was black, based on her view of his hand and forearm. She told police he had cut his hand as they struggled.

Police then stopped more than 200 minorities on the street and examined their hands for cuts, prompting a racial-discrimination lawsuit. A three-judge panel dismissed the discrimination portion of the case, saying the plaintiffs were questioned "on the altogether legitimate basis of a physical description given by the victim of a crime."

The full court rejected a request to rehear the case; Sotomayor disagreed with that decision. She signed onto a dissent with three other judges that called the panel decision "egregious" and said that her colleagues had legitimized police actions that, "even if they might ultimately be deemed valid, are . . . extremely offensive to a much abused part of our population."

'Judicial Restraint'

By contrast, Sotomayor showed little support for the case of the minister who sued over his church's mandatory retirement age. A lower-court judge threw out his allegation of age discrimination, but a 2nd Circuit panel reinstated the suit. The 2006 opinion by Republican appointees Ralph K. Winter Jr. and Barrington D. Parker Jr. said the claim fell under a different federal law than the one the minister sued under and that it should be reconsidered under the second statute.

Sotomayor countered that the suit should be dismissed, that the second law "is not relevant to this dispute." Echoing language often used by conservatives, she wrote, "The majority's opinion thus violates a cardinal principle of judicial restraint."

Supporters say the case involving New York City police officer Thomas Pappas also shows Sotomayor is no reflexive liberal. Pappas had responded to requests for charitable donations from another police department by sending back fliers that ridiculed black people, warned against the "Negro wolf . . . destroying American civilization" and said Jews control the television networks.

Pappas was fired, and he filed suit, alleging that his First Amendment rights to free speech had been violated. A lower court threw out his lawsuit, and a three-judge 2nd Circuit panel agreed.

In a strongly worded dissent, Sotomayor came out in favor of the officer. "To be sure, I find the speech in this case patently offensive, hateful, and insulting," she wrote. "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."

Scott Moss, a University of Colorado professor who was among the group put together by the White House, said, "If she were really a judge who ruled on personal or ideological preference, Pappas is about the last guy you'd want to stretch the law for."

Clegg, however, said that decision provided little comfort because "liberal judges" and organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union frequently support free speech.

Research director Lucy Shackelford and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.