Sotomayor confirmation greeted with supreme pride in South Florida

By Mike Clary

South Florida Sun Sentinel

6:28 PM EDT, August 6, 2009

MIAMI - A wave of pride swept through South Florida's Hispanic communities - and a Margate mom planned a flight to Washington - after Sonia Sotomayor won confirmation Thursday to join the U.S. Supreme Court as its first Hispanic justice.

Her confirmation, by a Senate vote of 68 to 31, is "great on many levels," said Hollywood attorney Nydia Menendez, president of the Puerto Rican Bar Association. "As a Puerto Rican woman, also raised in the Bronx, I am personally delighted."

The elevation to the nation's highest court of a woman from a working-class family also represents a triumph that transcends ethnicity, Menendez said. "This is a great time for all the people."

Hours before the Senate vote was tallied, Celina Sotomayor, 82, who lives in a Margate condominium, said, "I'm just preparing, in case I have to go to Washington" to see her daughter's swearing-in.

During her confirmation hearings, Sotomayor credited her mother with instilling in her the values and work ethic that propelled her from a public housing project to an Ivy League education and a federal judgeship in New York.

"The progression of my life has been uniquely American," Sotomayor said last month.

President Barack Obama echoed that today following the Senate vote. "This is a wonderful day for Judge Sotomayor and her family, but I also think it's a wonderful day for America," Obama said at the White House.

Miami lawyer Stephen Zack, the first Hispanic president-elect of the American Bar Association, lauded Sotomayor's confirmation as "an important, hopeful sign to the nation's fastest-growing population.

"There is not anyone of Hispanic descent that does not feel a sense of pride by her acceptance and appointment to the court," said Zack, who was born in the United States to a Cuban mother. "This should be celebrated throughout the U.S."

The celebration will continue next week when the Puerto Rican Leadership Council of South Florida sponsors two parties: 6-9 p.m. Thursday at the Hilton Airport Hotel in West Palm Beach and 5:30-8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Double Tree Grand Hotel in Miami.