Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Sotomayor Sonia Maria Sotomayor (; born June 25, 1954) is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, appointed by President Barack Obama in May 2009 and confirmed in August 2009. She has the distinction of being its first justice of Hispanic descent and the first Latina. Sotomayor was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Puerto Rican-born parents. Her father died when she was nine, and she was subsequently raised by her mother. Sotomayor graduated "summa cum laude" from Princeton University in 1976 and received her J.D. from Yale Law School in 1979, where
Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans Asian Hispanic and Latino Americans are Hispanic and Latino Americans having Asian ancestry and for those Hispanics who consider themselves or were officially classified by the United States Census Bureau, Office of Management and Budget, and other U.S. government agencies as Asian Americans. Hispanicity, which is independent of race, is the only ethnic category, as opposed to racial category, which is officially unified by the U.S. Census Bureau. The distinction made by government agencies for those within the population of any official race category, including "Asian American", is between those who report Hispanic or Latino