Sotomayor Resigns From All-Woman Club

Because of pressure from Republicans, Sonia Sotomayor has resigned from Belizean Grove, the women’s group for high achievers.

In a letter to Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the federal appeals court judge says she is convinced the club does not practice “invidious discrimination” and that her membership in it did not violate judicial ethics.

But she says she didn’t want questions about it to “distract anyone from my qualifications and record.”

Belizean Grove is a tongue-in-cheek reference to the all-male Bohemian Grove (r), the white, patrician, all-male Republican club that has hosted every GOP president since Calvin Coolidge and many other, mostly right-wing members of the ruling class.  Jeffrey Toobin in The New Yorker explains the difference between an all-male club like Bohemian Grove and a group for women who have not been part of the ruling class:

The reason why Sotomayor’s club is likely to present her with little problem is that the Senators will understand that it’s helpful for women to have that kind of support network, because even now women are just establishing themselves in male-dominated institutions. (Like, say, the Supreme Court—where 112 of the 114 Justices have been men.) But it is a different standard.

David Gergen resigned from the Bohemian Club in 1993 when he was a presidential  advisor to Bill Clinton, even though he never had to do such an about-face when he was in the Nixon Ford and Reagan administrations.

Chances are that,  given the Bohemian Club’s  weird rituals and urinating on redwoods, the club from which Judge Sotomayor unfortunately resigned had a more dignified nature.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.