Liberal Groups Go After White Firefighter Frank Ricci

On Friday, citing in an e-mail "Frank Ricci's troubled and litigious work history," the liberal advocacy group People for the American Way worked to draw reporters' attention to Frank Ricci's past. Frank Ricci was the white firefighter who was the lead plaintiff in the Supreme Court's reverse-discrimination case Ricci v. DeStafano. Other liberal advocates for Sotomayor have also urged journalists to pursue story lines that go on the attack against the firefighter.

"To go after so sympathetic a plaintiff as Frank Ricci . . . is a new low in the politics of personal destruction," said Roger Pilon, the director of the libertarian Cato Institute's Center for Constitutional Studies. "If they were smart, they'd keep a low profile."

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