HispanicBusiness

A conservative and controversial Evangelical Hispanic group today officially endorsed the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court -- an indication that many right-leaning Hispanics are breaking ranks with other mainstream Republicans on the issue.

Called the National Coalition of Latino Clergy and Christian Leaders, the group is made up of 20,000 Evangelical Hispanic churches, and is best known for its controversial call for illegal immigrants to boycott the 2010 Census.

On the group's blog, the leader of the group, Rev. Miguel Rivera, credited Sotomayor for being a " measured jurist with bedrock family values."

"She is not a judicial activist who seeks to impose a particular outcome based on her beliefs, but rather a judicious jurist who applies established law to the cases before her. CONLAMIC is confident that she has a restrained approach to the law," he said in the statement.

Late last month, Rev. Rivera told HispanicBusiness.com that the coalition favors justices who demonstrate a "conservative, constructionist" style, meaning they will not "become activists either for the extreme right or the extreme left." He added that the coalition has supported two of President George W. Bush's picks to the high court: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito.

In May, Rev. Rivera sent a letter to Republicans in Congress urging them to give Sotomayor a fair shake at the hearing, which, he claims, Democrats never did with Miguel Estrada, a Bush U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit nominee in 2001. The Democrats used a filibuster to block his nomination. Estrada eventually withdrew his name. Rev. Rivera recommended that Republicans consider the filibuster option only as a last resort.