The recent Ricci decision casts no negative reflection on Sotomayor

I’ve seen a lot of conservative commentators make arguments that the Supreme Court’s decision is somehow a repudiation of Sotomayor.  They’ve used the decision’s 90-page length as evidence of Sotomayor’s lack of good judgment, the fact of an overturned decision as evidence of it being “wrong”, and the fact that the appellants were White as evidence of her racism.

But I come to the opposite conclusions by calmly looking at the facts:

• The Court’s conservative majority reached its decision by creating law in the form of a new standard — a “strong basis in evidence” of the success of a disparate effect lawsuit is now required.Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, whose role is to interpret, not create law.
  
• The Court’s reasoning was based on a reading of the facts that was different from that of the trial court.  Several long and conflicting recitations of the facts caused the decision to reach ~90 pages.  In other words, the case was reviewed “de novo”. Sotomayor shouldn’t have done the same (and didn’t) as an appellate judge, who is required to give deference to the trial court’s findings of fact.
  
• The Court reached a 5-4 split decision along the supposed political lines: 4 conservatives, 4 liberals, and Justice Kennedy in the middle. Attempting to label Sotomayor’s decision to uphold the district court’s decision as radical or racist is simply disingenuous.