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Judicial Watch Investigates Sotomayor's Radical Friends at LatinoJustice

By Matthew Vadum on 6.18.09 @ 9:33PM

Judicial Watch has released a report on LatinoJustice PRLDEF (formerly the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund or PRLDEF), the racist left-wing group that at one time had Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on its board.

The Judicial Watch report, available here, notes that the group has long been been involved in the racial grievance industry and took many controversial positions while Sotomayor was deeply involved with it. (The report quotes my research at page 1.)

Excerpts: 

In 1980, when then-New York City Mayor Ed Koch criticized a Supreme Court decision that upheld racial quotas, the PRLDEF signed a statement characterizing the comments as "''ill-informed, rhetorically excessive and unnecessarily divisive." [...]

In 1981, the PRLDEF applauded a decision by a federal judge that forced teachers at an Ann Arbor Michigan elementary school to undergo "consciousness raising" about a dialect spoken by young black children called "Black English." The training program cost taxpayers $44,000. The civil rights attorney who handled the case, Gabe Kaimowitz, worked for the PRLDEF. He said his intent was to make the lawsuit the "basis of suits against schools in Chicago and New York, and to extend the suit to embrace not only poor blacks but poor Puerto Rican students," who supposedly spoke a dialect known as "Spanglish." [...]

In 1988, the PRLDEF engaged in a battle with the New York City Police Department over its "racist" promotion exam, ultimately presiding over a radical redesign to allow more minorities to achieve a passing grade. According to The New York Times: "The new test, a four-part exam prepared with the help of an expert designated by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense Fund...involved changes in format, including the addition of open-book questions and a video portion."

In 1990, the PRLDEF attacked then-New York Mayor David Dinkins after the mayor labeled three Puerto Rican "nationalists" who shot five members of Congress in 1954 "assassins." The radicals were members of a violent Puerto Rican terrorist group Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional (FALN). The PRLDEF said the mayor's comments "lacked sensitivity." Reuben Franco, President of the PRLDEF said: "[Mayor Dinkins] doesn't recognize that to many people in Puerto Rico, these are fighters for freedom and justice, for liberation, just as is Nelson Mandela, who himself advocated bearing arms.'' [...]

Of course, ACORN has already endorsed Sotomayor's nomination for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.