Sotomayor Gives ‘Exploding’ Hispanic Population a Role Model

By Peter Robison

May 27 (Bloomberg) -- At La Isla Seattle, a Puerto Rican restaurant and rum bar in Washington’s biggest city, co-owner Alfonso Gonzalez plans to add a “Sotomayor Special” to the pulled pork and smashed green plantains on the menu.

The new dish will be “something honorable” to befit Sonia Sotomayor, President Barack Obama’s choice to be the first Hispanic and third woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court.

“It makes me feel really proud,” said Gonzalez, 37, a native of Puerto Rico who has two daughters, ages 7 and 1. “It’s something for them to strive for.”

The nomination of Sotomayor, whose parents moved from Puerto Rico to New York, is a signpost for the U.S. and its Hispanic populace, said Haim Saban, chief executive officer of Saban Capital Group Inc., part-owner of New York-based Univision Communications Inc., the largest U.S. Spanish language broadcaster.

“A Hispanic woman as a justice is an accurate reflection of what America is,” Saban said in an e-mail message.

People of Hispanic or Latino descent make up 14.7 percent of the U.S. population, Census data show. Members of the fastest-growing racial minority, their numbers may increase 300 percent between 2006 and 2050, according to the University of Notre Dame Institute for Latino Studies, which has offices in Chicago and South Bend, Indiana.

‘Exploding’ Population

“The value to me is not so much that she is Latina and therefore she is going to come down on issues as a good Latina should,” said Allert Brown-Gort, the institute’s associate director. “The value is really rather that this assures that Latinos are considered an integral part of this country.”

Sotomayor, 54, who would replace retiring Justice David Souter, would bring to the court “an understanding of a population that’s exploding,” said Xavier Nogueras, president of the Puerto Rican Chamber of Commerce of Illinois and principal of Boca Ad Agency in Chicago.

As an appellate judge, Sotomayor was one of 70 Hispanic jurists on the federal bench as of March 2008, or 8.1 percent of the total, according to Just the Beginning Foundation, a nonprofit Chicago-based advocacy group for diversity in the U.S. legal profession.

Sotomayor, a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School, worked in the Manhattan district attorney’s office for five years and in private practice for eight years. President George H.W. Bush selected her as federal trial judge in 1992, and President Bill Clinton promoted her to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in 1998.

‘Long Overdue’

“It’s like watching the American dream from up close,” said Jorge G. Castro, chief executive officer of Lombardia Capital Partners LLC in Pasadena, California, who said he knew Sotomayor as an undergraduate. “There were very few Hispanic students at Princeton at the time, and she was always the smartest kid in the room.”

In the 1990s, Sotomayor was among a half-dozen Supreme Court candidates suggested to Clinton by a Hispanic National Bar Association panel, said Adelfa Callejo, a Dallas lawyer and committee member.

The nominee’s background, including growing up in a housing project in the South Bronx section and being raised by a single mother after her father died when she was 9, shapes her judicial perspective and augurs well for her confirmation, Callejo said.

“Appointing a Latina to the U.S. Supreme Court is long overdue,” Callejo said.

For Eileen Toledo, a middle school teacher in Gainesville, Georgia, Sotomayor’s success is a lesson to American citizens.

“People can see we are not all uneducated and we didn’t all come here illegally,” Toledo said.

‘Invisible’ Minority

The jurist’s appointment shows how far the U.S. has come since the civil rights movement, according to Roberto Maestas, who said he led the occupation of a Seattle school in 1972 to protest the cancellation of adult English classes for Hispanics.

“We were invisible,” said Maestas, executive director of the Seattle nonprofit community group El Centro de la Raza. “It’s a message that Latinos are here -- here to stay.”

Sotomayor’s selection isn’t necessarily something to celebrate among Hispanic Republicans, said Jason Villalba, an attorney with Haynes and Boone LLP and chairman of the Dallas Chapter of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

“I am proud as a Hispanic to see that a woman from my community can be appointed to the highest court in the land,” Villalba said. “But I do have reservations that the person who is going to represent our community is going to be a judicial activist and not someone who applies the law.”

Diverse Opinions

Conservative groups have criticized Sotomayor for suggesting in 2005 that jurists make, as well as interpret, the law. Appellate courts are “where policy is made,” she said.

The Judicial Confirmation Network, a conservative advocacy group, disparaged Sotomayor’s handling of a race case now before the Supreme Court. Sotomayor backed New Haven, Connecticut, after the city canceled fire department promotions because no blacks scored well enough on tests to qualify.

Democrats hold a 59-40 advantage in the Senate and would gain one if Al Franken is seated as a senator from Minnesota. Sixty votes would overcome a Republican-led procedural move to stall Sotomayor’s nomination.

Hispanics in the U.S., whose ancestors may have come from South America, Europe, the Caribbean or elsewhere, aren’t unified in their backgrounds or views, underscoring that Sotomayor “was not just a demographic pick,” said Cristina Lopez, president of the National Hispana Leadership Institute in Arlington, Virginia.

“The Latino community in the U.S. is diverse, as are other communities in the U.S.,” Lopez said.

‘Something Tangible’

Hector Villareal, chief executive officer of Lucho, a Houston-based designer and manufacturer of men’s clothing, sees Obama tapping the daughter of Puerto Ricans as symbolically significant for Hispanics regardless of their views on matters a judge might decide, he said.

“I know how important it is, not so much for people to realize what Hispanic women can do but for other Hispanic women to realize how far, how high you can go,” Villareal said.

At La Isla Seattle, the “Sotomayor Special” will join the Puerto Rican flag draping the wall of the restaurant as an emblem of pride, co-owner Gonzalez said.

Her nomination is “something tangible,” he said. “Now that somebody has achieved it, anybody can do it.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Peter Robison in Seattle at robison@bloomberg.net .

Last Updated: May 27, 2009 00:06 EDT

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