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 the person or the person's parents or ancestors before their arrival in the United States. People who identify as Spanish, Hispanic or Latino may be of any race. As the only specifically designated category of ethnicity in the United States (other than non-Hispanic/Latino), Hispanics form a pan-ethnicity incorporating a diversity of inter-related cultural and linguistic heritages. Most Hispanic Americans are of Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Salvadoran, Dominican, Guatemalan, or Colombian origin. The predominant origin of regional Hispanic populations varies widely in different locations across the country. Hispanic Americans are the second fastest-growing ethnic group by percentage growth in the United