Senate confirms Sotomayor, 68-31

WASHINGTON — The “wise Latina” is on her way to the Supreme Court.

Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday as the high court’s 111th justice, third woman and barrier-breaking first Hispanic after a summer-long debate heavy with ethnic politics and hints of nomination fights to come. She’ll be sworn in Saturday, the first addition to the court by a Democratic president in 15 years.

The historic Senate vote was 68-31 to confirm Sotomayor, with most Republicans lining up in a show of opposition both to her and to President Barack Obama’s standards for a justice.

Some foes — and Democratic supporters as well — pressed her during Senate hearings to explain controversial previous comments, particularly her 2001 utterance that she hoped a “wise Latina” judge would usually make better decisions than a white male without similar experiences.

Such comments were the basis for a searching debate between Republicans and Democrats about the proper place of background and personal perspective in a judge’s work. She told senators at the hearings she had meant to inspire young Hispanics with the idea “they could become anything they wanted to become,” not to suggest the quality of a judge depended on race, gender or ethnicity.

The 55-year-old daughter of Puerto Rican parents was raised in a South Bronx housing project and educated in the Ivy League before rising to the highest legal echelons, spending the past 17 years as a federal judge. She watched the vote on TV at a federal courthouse in New York City, among friends and colleagues.

In the Senate, Republicans argued she’d bring personal bias and a liberal agenda to the bench. But Democrats praised Sotomayor as an extraordinarily qualified mainstream moderate and touted her elevation to the court as a milestone in the nation’s journey toward greater equality and a reaffirmation of the American dream.

Obama, the nation’s first black president, praised the Senate’s vote as “breaking another barrier and moving us yet another step closer to a more perfect union.” He planned to welcome Sotomayor at the White House next week.

Sotomayor replaces retiring Justice David Souter, a liberal named by a Republican president, and she is not expected to alter the court’s ideological split.

In the final tally, nine Republicans joined majority Democrats and the Senate’s two independents to support Sotomayor’s confirmation. They included the Senate’s few GOP moderates and its lone Hispanic Republican, retiring Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida, as well as conservative Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, the party’s third-ranking leader.

Republicans have been particularly critical of Sotomayor’s position on the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. She was part of a federal appeals court panel in New York that ruled this year that the amendment limits only the federal government — not states — a decision in keeping with previous Supreme Court precedent. Gun rights supporters said her panel shouldn’t have called the issue “settled law,” and they criticized her for refusing during her confirmation hearings to go beyond what the high court has said and declare that the Second Amendment applies to the states.

The National Rifle Association, which hadn’t weighed in on Supreme Court nominations past, strongly opposed her and threatened to downgrade its ratings of any senator who voted to confirm Sotomayor. The warning may have influenced some Republicans who were initially considered possible supporters but later announced their opposition, citing gun rights as a key reason.

Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice, asserted that “it is unlikely that a president will ever again choose a Supreme Court nominee with a record that can be characterized as hostile to the Second Amendment.”

In the two most recent confirmation votes, the Senate had approved Chief Justice John Roberts by a 78-22 vote and Samuel Alito by 58-42.