President Bush nominated the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals judge Oct. 31 to replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. If he’s confirmed by the Senate, Alito is likely to bring a conservative perspective on employment law to the nation’s highest court. Alito has weighed in on a significant number of workplace cases because the 3rd Circuit Court’s jurisdiction includes Delaware, home to many corporate headquarters.

"He has consistently chosen to interpret anti-discrimination protections as narrowly as possible," says Suzanne Goldberg, professor of law at Rutgers University.

In a case involving an African-American woman who sued the Marriott Hotel Corp. over being denied a promotion, Alito argued that the case should not go to a jury. Although the company failed to tell Beryl Bray that she had been passed over, its actions didn’t constitute discrimination, according to Alito.

"I was surprised by the degree to which he sifted through evidence related to the employees in question," says Greg O’Duden, general counsel to the National Treasury Employees Union. O’Duden is researching Alito to help the union determine whether it will support or oppose the nomination. "He gave quite a bit of deference to managers’ judgment on who is a qualified employee for promotion. He would have placed a difficult burden on the employee."

His Marriott ruling demonstrates that Alito tends to keep courts out of workplace decision-making says Jeff Corradino, a partner in the Morristown, New Jersey, office of Jackson Lewis.

"He seems to be a strong advocate of management rights that basically stem from the concept of at-will employment," Corradino says. "When it’s not invidious or wrong, the company is going to have a lot of leeway."

In another case, Alito wanted to give states latitude to ignore the Family and Medical Leave Act. He argued that it was unconstitutional for an employee to sue the state of Pennsylvania for failing to provide time off because there was no evidence of intentional gender discrimination.

Alito’s stance was based on a stereotype of a woman’s role in society, according to one critic. "He’s going to this narrow interpretation which in the real world is useless," says Kathy Rodgers, president of Legal Momentum, a women’s advocacy group.

"There is evidence that he lacks an understanding about how discrimination works in real life," Rodgers says. "That was something Sandra Day O’Connor understood to her core because she lived it."

In the Family and Medical Leave case and in some discrimination suits, Alito’s positions were rejected by the Supreme Court, which was led by the late conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist.

Alito is "not only conservative but also at the end extreme of conservative jurisprudence and out of step with the mainstream views of the American public," Goldberg says.

Although his rulings are conservative, Alito is described as low-key and humble, rather than a firebrand. Still, his confirmation process is likely to be explosive because of the enormous volume of his paper trail.

Unlike their reactions to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed in September, liberal and conservative groups came out decisively on Alito within hours of Bush’s announcement. Weeks of battle loom.

--Mark Schoeff Jr.