Documents on nominee Sotomayor at issue

WASHINGTON -- The White House hit back yesterday at a key Republican senator who has accused Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor's allies of withholding documents from her past.

White House Counsel Greg Craig told Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the top Republican on the Judiciary Committee, that board meeting minutes and other papers detailing the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund's activities while Sotomayor was an outside adviser aren't relevant. Republicans have raised concerns about the judge's involvement in the group, arguing it has taken extreme positions.

Sotomayor early last month gave the panel documents to which she contributed or helped write as a board member. But Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., the Judiciary chairman, joined Sessions recently in asking for more information about the group's activities and policy positions while she was involved.

The organization, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, began sending some of that material to the committee Wednesday, but Sessions' office said Sotomayor's backers were delaying the release of the information to prevent a thorough investigation.

In a letter to Sessions, Craig said the Judiciary panel already has all pertinent documents on Sotomayor.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund officially campaigned against seating conservative Robert Bork on the high court in the late 1980s.

Bork's nomination by President Ronald Reagan was rejected by the Senate in 1987.

The group opposed him "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the Latino community," its president reported in one of several documents from the group that the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday.

The White House is strongly resisting Republicans' suggestions that Sotomayor's nomination hearings should be delayed to give them more time to review the group's documents.

"This has all the hallmarks of a deliberate delay and an attempt to frustrate a thorough review of this important information," Stephen Boyd, Sessions' spokesman, said in a statement. "If these dilatory tactics continue, it will be increasingly more difficult for the hearing to go forward on July 13."

Republicans have criticized Sotomayor's participation in the group, which they say has taken radical positions and sought to gain racial preferences for Hispanics. They argue that her ties to the group, taken together with Sotomayor's statements about how her heritage shapes her views as a judge, raise doubts about whether she can be an impartial, colorblind justice.