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–Latino naming dispute Within the U.S., the term originally referred typically to the Hispanos of New Mexico until the U.S. government used it in the 1970 Census to refer to "a person of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, South or Central American, or other Spanish culture or origin, regardless of race." The OMB did not accept the recommendation to retain the single term "Hispanic". Instead, the OMB has decided that the term should be "Hispanic or Latino" because regional usage of the terms differs. Hispanic is commonly used in the eastern portion of the United States, whereas Latino is commonly used in the western