NEW YORK
Cesar Perales has fought his share of critics over the years, in legal battles for minorities denied jobs, bilingual classes in schools and more Latino police officers.
But none of those crusades compares with the tempest his Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund has stirred because of the dozen years that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor served as one of its board members.
Conservatives have called the group’s stances against capital punishment and for abortion rights, as well as its advocacy of affirmative action in worker discrimination cases, “extreme” and “shocking.” Some have suggested Sotomayor’s longtime association with the group is an indication that she is biased and would be unable to render impartial decisions as a Supreme Court justice.
The critiques leading up to this week’s Senate hearings on Sotomayor’s confirmation have stunned Perales, who calls them an attempt to derail her nomination by over-politicizing the work of his legal defense fund.
“You have a reputable group that has stood up for the civil rights of Latinos for 37 years,” said Perales, the group’s president. “To suddenly be accused of being something bad, and that anyone associated with it should not be allowed to serve on the Supreme Court, to me is shocking.”
Perales and two other attorneys founded the fund, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, in a Manhattan office building in 1972. They modeled it after one of the most high-profile civil rights organizations in the country, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
