 By the end of her fifth year on the court , Sotomayor had become especially visible in oral arguments and in passionate dissents from various majority rulings , especially those involving issues of race , gender and ethnic identity . Sotomayor has shown her individuality on the Court in a number of decisions . In her reading of the constitutionality of the Obama health care law favoring the poor and disabled , she sided with Ginsburg against fellow liberals Breyer and Kagan . In dealing with the Chief Justice , Sotomayor had no difficulty in responding to his statement that " the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discrimination on the basis of race , " by stating , " I don 't borrow Chief Justice Roberts 's description of what color @-@ blindness is ... Our society is too complex to use that kind of analysis . " In the manufacturer liability case of Williamson v. Mazda , which the court decided unanimously , she wrote a separate concurring opinion . Sotomayor 's rapport with her clerks is seen as more formalistic than some of the other justices as she requires detailed and rigorous evaluations of cases she is considering with a table of contents attached . When compared to Kagan directly , one of their colleagues stated , " Neither of them is a shrinking violet " . Coyle , in her 2013 book on the Roberts Court stated that : " Both women are more vocal during arguments than the justices whom they succeeded , and they have energized the moderate @-@ liberal side of the bench . " 
