June 25 - BlackFacts.com Black History Minute

BlackFacts.com: Learn/Teach/Create Black History

BlackFacts.com presents the black fact of the day for June 25.

Sonia Sotomayor was born.

She is an associate justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, the first woman of color, first Hispanic, and first Latina member of the Court.

Sotomayor was raised in a housing project in the Bronx.

After the death of her father, her mother worked long hours as a nurse to support the family.

She graduated summa cum laude from Princeton University before attending Yale Law School on a scholarship. In 1979, Sotomayor was awarded a Juris Doctor. She was admitted to the New York Bar the following year.

When President Bill Clinton nominated Sotomayor to be a judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in 1997, Republican senators delayed her appointment for more than a year because of their concerns that the position might lead to a Supreme Court nomination.

In May 2009 Pres. Barack Obama nominated Sotomayor to the Supreme Court in order to fill the vacancy left by departing justice David Souter.

Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July 2009 went smoothly, and the following month she was confirmed (68–31) by the Senate.

During her tenure on the Supreme Court, Sotomayor has been identified with concern for the rights of defendants, calls for reform of the criminal justice system, and making impassioned dissents on issues of race, gender and ethnic identity.

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