In her Schuette dissent, Justice Sotomayor “reproduced” several infographics from a New York Times article showing the decline in the number of black and hispanic students at the University of Michigan. But it seems the infographic was modified, slightly. Here is the original from the Times.

 

You can see that the text to the right of the graphic was cut out, likely because it did not fit in the small margins. Instead, someone at One First Street added their own labels to the data-points. “of state’s college-aged residents are black” was shortened to “College-aged- MI residents.”  And “% of freshmen are black” was shortened to “Freshman.” I wonder if the Supreme Court has a Photoshop expert.

 

 

I will drop my usual gripe that Courts should not be citing facts not in the record, though the final 11 pages of Sotomayor’s dissent read like a policy white paper, so whatever. Judges should also not be modifying pictures, though here it is innocuous.