Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Maria Sotomayor (; born June 25, 1954) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in May 2009 and confirmed in August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic descent and the first Latina. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Her father died when she was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated "summa cum laude" from Princeton University in 1976 and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where
Hispanic–Latino naming dispute cause of civil rights and political participation in America." Hispanic–Latino naming dispute The Hispanic–Latino naming dispute is an ongoing disagreement over the use of the ethnonyms "Hispanic" and "Latino" to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States of America who are of Latin American or Spanish origin—that is, Latino or Hispanic Americans. The usage of both terms has changed to adapt to a wide range of geographical and historical influences. The term "Hispanic" was used first; later, some Hispanics in the western United States came to prefer the term "Latino". The Census does not classify persons of Portuguese