Who Is Sonia Sotomayor?

New York City: May 25, 2009

It was a warm spring day—the kind of day to be outside. But Sonia Sotomayor was in her office, sitting beside her phone. She was waiting for the most important call of her life. A call from the White House! She would learn whether President Barack Obama wanted her to be a judge on the Supreme Court.

Sonia was already a judge. Her courtroom was in downtown New York City. But being one of the nine judges on the Supreme Court would be very different.

The Supreme Court is the most important court in the country—it decides whether laws in the United States are fair or not. Its decisions are final.

All day the phone in her office rang again and again. Each time Sonia picked it up, it was her family calling. They wanted to know what was happening. If she got the job, she would be only the third woman to sit on the Supreme Court—and the very first Hispanic person. Her family would be invited to go to the White House with her the next day. Some family members were coming from Puerto Rico!

Finally, at seven o'clock that evening, Sonia couldn't stand waiting any longer. She picked up the phone and called the White House herself. She spoke to an aide to the president. What should she do? If she was picked, she had to get to Washington by the next morning.

The aide told Sonia to go home and pack—and wait for a call.

Then, a little after 8:00 p.m., the call came, the one she so hoped for. It was the president. He told her he would name her to be the next associate justice on the Supreme Court!

Sonia choked up and started to cry. “Thank you, Mr. President,” she said.

Then he asked her to promise two things. He wanted her to stay the same person that she was—and to always stay connected to the world she had come from.

For Sonia Sotomayor—a girl who had grown up poor and proud of her Puerto Rican heritage—that was a promise she was very happy to make.