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 in 1992 when she became a judge. In addition to her law firm work, Sotomayor found visible public service roles. She was not connected to the party bosses that typically picked people for such jobs in New York, and indeed she was registered as an independent. Instead, District Attorney Morgenthau, an influential figure, served as her patron. In 1987, Governor of New York Mario Cuomo appointed Sotomayor to the board of the State of New York Mortgage Agency, which she served on until 1992. As part of one of the largest urban rebuilding efforts in American history, the agency helped