What Sotomayor Said Was Worse

Donald Trump should apologize.

It’s one thing to accuse a judge of bias. It’s another to refer to a judge — as Donald Trump did to the man presiding over the Trump University cases — as a “Mexican.” The judge, Gonzalo Curiel, happens to have been born in Indiana. But as far as Trump is concerned, this does not make him a Hoosier. Yet as Trump has doubled and tripled down on referring to the judge’s ethnicity as grounds for bias, his lawyers have, at least so far, not filed a motion for recusal.

Trump should ask his critics why the silence over Judge and now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s comments on the role of race and ethnicity in how judges reach decisions. In speeches before she became a Supreme Court justice, Sotomayor said, “I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn’t lived that life.” She also said, “Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences … our gender and national origins may and will (emphasis added) make a difference in our judging.”

Trump is angry at a particular judge. But Sotomayor made a flat-out assertion that whites, blacks, Hispanics and women not only may, but will, make rulings according their sex, race and ethnicity — whatever that means. How is this any less bigoted than Trump calling out Curiel because he’s “Mexican”?

An apology could be companied with a trademark attack on the media. After all, Trump could say, the media did not hyperventilate over then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s association with his bigoted pastor. Yet Trump could argue that when a Trump statement is perceived as bigoted, out come the axes. That is a legitimate double-standard argument to make, and Trump could have and should have made it. Instead he’s off topic, wasting time and losing support.

Man up, Mr. Trump. Apologize. Then bring up Sotomayor. Ask why the double standard and the selective outrage. But going after Curiel is not the hill to die on.

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