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–Latino naming dispute Hispanic–Latino naming dispute The Hispanic–Latino naming dispute is an ongoing disagreement over the use of the ethnonyms "Hispanic" and "Latino" to refer collectively to the inhabitants of the United States of America who are of Latin American or Spanish origin—that is, Latino or Hispanic Americans. The usage of both terms has changed to adapt to a wide range of geographical and historical influences. The term "Hispanic" was used first; later, some Hispanics in the western United States came to prefer the term "Latino". The Census does not classify persons of Portuguese or Brazilian descent as Hispanic, as those are Portuguese-speaking