-- by Julie Hirschfeld Davis, The Associated Press

A Puerto Rican civil rights organization advised by Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor campaigned against seating conservative Robert Bork on the high court in the late 1980s, according to new documents that shed light on the group that's become a key focus of Republicans questioning Sotomayor's fitness to be a justice.

The Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund officially opposed Bork, whose nomination by President Ronald Reagan was rejected by the Senate in 1987, "because of the threat he poses to the civil rights of the Latino community," its president reported in one of several documents from the group that the Senate Judiciary Committee released Wednesday.

The 350-plus pages of material offer little evidence about Sotomayor's role in the cases and causes the organization, now known as LatinoJustice PRLDEF, took up while she served on its board from 1980 until 1992.

But Republicans quickly seized on them as full of "red flags" on Sotomayor, whose hearings are scheduled to begin July 13. A top aide to Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary panel, accused Sotomayor's allies of purposely withholding the documents in a bid to rush through Sotomayor's confirmation.

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