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
Black Hispanic and Latino Americans Black Hispanic and Latino Americans In the United States, a Black Hispanic or Afro-Hispanic (), is an American citizen or resident who is officially classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget and other U.S. government agencies as a black person or racially black of Hispanic descent." Hispanicity, which is independent of race, is the only "ethnic" category, as opposed to racial category, which is officially collated by the U.S. Census Bureau. The distinction made by government agencies for those within the population of any official race category, including "Black", is between those who report Hispanic