I’ve done one general post on Sonia Sotomayor and another one dealing with her personal background. We now turn to Sotomayor’s record as a judge, with particular emphasis on her involvement with labor and employment cases. My thanks to April Finn, one of our summer clerks at Miller & Martin and a law student at Washington & Lee University, for her assistance with this post and several to follow.

Sonia Sotomayor served six years as a Judge for the U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. This means she was a trial judge, hearing some cases by herself, as well as presiding over jury trials. She decided some cases on her own before a jury could hear the case, ruling on motions for summary judgment (requests to dismiss the case without a trial) or some other kind of motion ending the case without a trial. As a trial judge, it’s fair to say that she dealt just as much with factual interpretations as legal issues.

As a U.S. district judge, Sotomayor was involved in deciding at least 14 officially reported or published labor and employment cases of a substantive nature. (I’m not including cases that were decided on a strictly procedural basis.) Based on these cases, it’s hard to say that she was solidly pro-employee or pro-employer while she was a trial judge. It’s easier to say that, unlike some federal judges at the trial level, she seemed generally inclined to allow cases to be heard by a jury instead of dismissing them on her own without a trial.

Since most labor and employment lawyers who represent employers try as hard as they can to have a trial judge dismiss a case and to avoid a jury trial, some might argue that Sotomayor’s propensity in this regard makes her somewhat pro-employee. While that may be a valid point, it’s important to look at the specifics of each case.

Time and space constraints make it impossible to provide a comprehensive review of Sotomayor’s decisions in these labor employment law cases. We can, however, get a flavor for how Sotomayor approached labor and employment cases from a trial judge’s perspective. Some of you may want to dig deeper on these cases. Feel free, and please let me know if you find something that sheds a different light on my analysis of her labor and employment record and approach. Also, please let me know if I have overlooked a case that should be included in this list.

The next few posts on Sotomayor will look at her decisions in the following cases:

• Archie v. Grand Central Partnership, Inc., 997 F. Supp. 504 (SDNY 1998);
• Cartagena v. Ogden Services Corp., 995 F. Supp. 459 F. Supp. 459 (SDNY 1998);
• Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Doremus & Company, 921 F. Supp. 1048 (SDNY 1995);
• Gorwin v. Local 282, I.B.T. and Testwell Craig Laboratories, Inc., 836 F. Supp. 116 (SDNY 1993);
• Greenbaum v. Svenska Handelsbanken, 67 F. Supp. 2d 228 (SDNY 1999);
• Haybeck v. Prodigy Services Co., 944 F. Supp. 326 (SDNY 1996);
• Heaning v. NYMEX-New York, 945 F. Supp. 640 (SDNY 1996);
• Hoffman v. Sbarro, Inc., 982 F. Supp. 249 (SDNY 1997);
• Lanahan v. Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, 5 F. Supp. 2d 649 (SDNY 1998);
• Matthews v. LeBoeuf, Lamb, Greene & MacRae, 902 F. Supp. 26 (SDNY 1995);
• McNeil v. Aquilos, 831 F. Supp. 1079 (SDNY 1993);
• Realite v. Ark Restaurants Corp., 7 F. Supp. 2d (SDNY 1998);
• Silverman v. Major League Baseball Player Relations Committee, Inc., 880 F. Supp. 246 (SDNY 1995); and
• Valentine v. Standard & Poor’s, 50 F. Supp. 2d 262 (SDNY 1999)

Stay tuned.

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To learn more about changes in the U.S. Supreme Court, changes in employment law in 2009 and what’s on the horizon in employment law for 2010, check out the Advanced Employment Issues Symposium being held in Nashville Sept. 17-18, 2009, and in Las Vegas on Oct. 29-30, 2009.