Sonia Sotomayor vote was largely along party lines, with no Democrats opposing her and nine Republicans supporting her. President Obama commissioned Sotomayor on the day of her confirmation; Sotomayor was sworn in on August 8, 2009, by Chief Justice John Roberts. Sotomayor is the first Hispanic to serve on the Supreme Court. Some attention has been given to Justice Benjamin Cardozo – a Sephardic Jew believed to be of distant Portuguese descent – as the first Hispanic on the court when appointed in 1932, but his roots were uncertain, the term "Hispanic" was not in use as an ethnic identifier at the
Sonia Sotomayor conservative bloc had prevailed, and was opposed by the court's three female members: Sotomayor, Ginsburg and Kagan. They suggested that the Hobby Lobby decision was not the Court's conclusive opinion on birth control. In her dissent to the injunction, Sotomayor wrote that, "Those who are bound by our decisions usually believe they can take us at our word ... Not today." Sotomayor stated further her opinion that the decision compromised "hundreds of Wheaton's employees and students of their legal entitlement to contraceptive coverage." Sotomayor was an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law from 1998 to 2007. There