This is what I found when I did a search on her decisions on disability issues. I am not sure what that means for the future but it does seem at least hopeful that she is aware of the issues real people face.
Some of Judge Sotomayor’s best known legal opinions concern discrimination against people with disabilities. In the case of Bartlett v. New York State Board of Law Examiners, Judge Sotomayor ruled that a law school graduate who had a diagnosable learning disability and a similar disability related to reeading was legally entitled to extra time to take the bar exams. Sotomayor’s opinion read, in part ““By its very nature, diagnosing a learning disability requires clinical judgment.” After the Supreme Court decided that people who can function “normally by wearing glasses, taking medication, or otherwise compensating for their disability” are not protected under the Americans With Disabilities Act, the Supreme Court told Sotomayor’s appeals court to reconsider their decision in this case. Judge Sotomayor again found that the woman was disabled, and must be given “certain accommodations” — Sotomayor wrote that test scores alone were not enough to diagnose a disability. A similar case involved a trucking company that rejected applicants who were taking certain medications. Judge Sotomayor dissented from the majority opinion of her court, writing that the trucking company (Hunt) had determined the applicants were “substantially limited in the major life activity of working,” and not simply “unsuited for long-distance driving of Hunt’s trucks on irregular stressful schedules.” Sotomayor’s best known opinions are generally dissentions.
