Demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States Obama. In 2009, Obama appointed Sonia Sotomayor, a woman of Puerto Rican descent, to be the first unequivocally Hispanic Justice. Both the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and the Hispanic National Bar Association count Sotomayor as the first Hispanic justice. Some historians contend that Cardozo—a Sephardic Jew believed to be of distant Portuguese descent—should also be counted as the first Hispanic Justice. Schmidhauser wrote in 1979 that "[a]mong the large ethnic groupings of European origin which have never been represented upon the Supreme Court are the Italians, Southern Slavs, and Hispanic Americans." The National Hispanic Center for
National Institute for Latino Policy Latino National Political Survey, “ "PS: Political Science and Politics", Vol. 20, No. 4 (December 1989), pp. 848–852. _____________, “Puerto Ricans and the 1989 Mayoral Election in New York City,” "Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences", Vol. 11, No. 2 (August 1989), pp. 245–258. Angelo Falcón, "New York Latinos and the Mosque Controversy,” New America Media (September 22, 2010). __________, “Latinos, Health Reform and Dogs,” New America Media (December 25, 2009). __________, “Sotomayor is as American as Mango Pie,” CNN.com (July 20, 2009) __________, “A Closer Look at the White House ‘Takeover’ of the Census,” Hispanic Link News Service (February 2009)