Equality under the law won over judicial empathy today. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of a group of men in New Haven Connecticut who worked hard to earn promotions according to the rules set forth by their employer and were then denied said promotions because of race. Not much of a news making story except for the fact that the men discriminated against are white. And the decision the high court overturned in their ruling was made, in part, by current Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor. And the decision was based on the rule of law not President Obama's preferred criteria of empathy for the litigants.

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If you aren't aware of the details of the case, in Ricci v. DeStefano white New Haven, Connecticut firefighters were denied promotions after passing a qualifying exam. New Haven threw out the results of the exam because no African Americans passed the test. The case made its way to a three judge panel in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals where the decision of a lower court to dismiss the suit was upheld without any mention of the Constitutional issues. One of the three judges on that panel was Sonia Sotomayor.

The city of New Haven claimed it had acted the way it did to avoid a lawsuit from minorities and today Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court, "Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer's reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions." (source) Justice Kennedy was joined in his opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

Bringing up the rear on the empathetic side of the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke for the minority opinion joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens saying the white firefighters "understandably attract this court's sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion." (source)

The left side of the court can keep their sympathy. Their job is to hand out justice.