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
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