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
Hispanic and Latino Americans identify themselves with a non-Christian religion (including Islam, Judaism, Buddhism...), and 6% have no religious preference (with only 0.37% claiming to be either atheist or agnostic). The results of this study suggest that Hispanics/Latinos are not only a highly religious, but also a highly Christian constituency. It also suggests that Hispanic/Latino Protestants are a more sizable minority than is sometimes realized. Catholic affiliation is much higher among first-generation than it is among second- or third-generation Hispanic or Latino immigrants, who exhibit a fairly high rate of defection to Protestantism. Also Hispanics and Latinos in the Bible Belt, which is mostly