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Sonia Sotomayor (2011)

Associate justice since Aug. 8, 2009

Positions

Positions are those where a justice was an officer, director, trustee, partner, proprietor, representative, employee or consultant for any organization other than the U.S. government at the time the disclosure was filed.

No positions

Agreements

Agreements include any agreements into which a justice has entered, such as employment contracts, continuing payments from former employers and continuing participation in employee welfare or benefit plans maintained by a former employer.

No agreements

Noninvestment income

Noninvestment income includes compensation from jobs the justice has had, such as teaching roles; jobs at law firms before they were judges; pension benefits; and royalties for intellectual property, such as books and copyrights.

No non-investment-income

Spousal income

Spousal income includes earned income from jobs a justice’s spouse has held, as well as honoraria. Justices are required to report a spouse’s income that exceeded $1,000 but are not required to disclose specific amounts.

No spouse-income

Travel Reimbursements

Reimbursements include any payment or thing of value received to cover travel-related expenses for justices and their families. They can include expenses that the third party paid directly or for which a justice paid upfront and was reimbursed, but justices are not required to report reimbursements’ dollar values. Show more.

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Date Source Location Purpose Items Paid or Provided
Dec. 9 – 11, 2011 Vermont Women’s Economic Opportunity Conference Randolph, VT Speaking

Question and answer presentation

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Nov. 17 – 18, 2011 Harvard University Cambridge, MA Moot Court

Moot court competition

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Sept. 5 – 8, 2011 Santa Fe Indian School Leadership Institute Santa Fe, NM Meetings

Community meetings

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Aug. 14 – 18, 2011 U.S. Embassy in El Salvador San Salvador, El Salvador Meetings

Community meetings

Food, Lodging, Transportation
May 5 – 7, 2011 University of South Carolina Columbia, SC Speaking

Commencement speech

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Feb. 2 – 4, 2011 University of California, Berkeley Berkeley, CA Meetings, Moot Court

Moot court competition, meetings

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Jan. 29 – 31, 2011 The University of Chicago Chicago, IL Meetings, Speaking

Question and answer presentation, meetings

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Oct. 21, 2011 Columbia University New York, NY Speaking

Question and answer presentation

Food, Transportation
May 13, 2011 Ramapo College of New Jersey Ramapo, NJ Ceremony

Commencement speech

Food, Transportation
April 29, 2011 Princeton University Princeton, NJ Conference/Symposium

Alumni Women’s Conference

Food, Transportation
April 7, 2011 Columbia University New York, NY Moot Court

Moot court competition

Food, Transportation
March 11, 2011 Philadelphia Bar Association Philadelphia, PA Speaking

Speech

Food, Transportation
Feb. 1, 2011 Northwestern University Evanston, IL Teaching Food, Lodging, Transportation
Jan. 28, 2011 Washburn University and University of Kansas Lawrence, KS Speaking

Question and answer presentation

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Jan. 27, 2011 Kansas State University Manhattan, KS Speaking

Lecture

Food, Lodging, Transportation

Gifts

Gifts include gifts received by justices, their spouses or their dependent children from any source other than a relative. Justices are only required to disclose gifts worth more than $166 and whose aggregate value with other gifts from the same source exceed $415 within the reporting period, generally a calendar year. This only captures gifts that have been disclosed, which ProPublica reporting shows can be incomplete. Show more.

Source Description Value
Butler Family Fine china $1,400.00
Robert Weingarten Translucent composite print $6,000.00

Liabilities

Liabilities include debts that exceeded $10,000 at any time during the reporting period for justices, their spouses or their dependent children. Because justices have to report these each year, some debts may show up multiple times in the table. Show more.

Creditor Description Value
American Express Credit card $0 – $15,000
Discover Credit card $0 – $15,000

Investments

Investments include cash accounts, property, stocks, investment funds, retirement plans and other financial instruments owned by justices, their spouses and dependent children in excess of certain value thresholds or generating more than $200 in income in a year. Justices are not required to disclose information about their personal residences unless they generate rental income.

ProPublica has not extracted investments data for 2011. For information about Sonia Sotomayor’s investments, view the filing.

Additional Information or Explanations

Additional information or explanations include a justice’s explanatory comments clarifying other portions of the report. These may include explanations of apparent inconsistencies with previous reports, third-party opinions on possible conflicts of interest or other supporting documentation.

1) Part V. GIFTS.

During 2011 many people sent me gifts of books, art, jewelry and trinkets. I have no reason to believe that any of those items exceeded the $335.00 limit. If I should learn otherwise, I will amend this form.

2) Part VII. Investments and Trusts, Page 1 line 14:

Rental property in New York, New York was converted from personal to business. Value was determined by written appraisal dated 10/6/2010.

About The Data

The bulk of the data we used came from the Free Law Project, which maintains a database of more than 35,000 financial disclosure records for federal judges, justices and magistrates, most of it dating back to 2003. These disclosures, which federal employees are required to file each year under the Ethics in Government Act of 1978, are maintained by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The law, however, requires most of them to be destroyed after six years, making many disclosures from earlier years hard to find. Our disclosures cover most of those filed since 2003, as well as some financial information disclosed by some justices during their Senate confirmations in 1990, 1991 and 2000. (Do you have information about a Supreme Court justice’s finances from before 2003? Email us.)

Because much of the data was extracted from PDFs using optical character recognition, we designed our own database and imported and cleaned the Free Law Project’s data to fix scanning and other errors. We corrected spelling errors, edited fields for style and clarity and, where possible, attempted to add contextual information by, for example, categorizing organizations and transactions, standardizing certain fields, updating entity names or filling in missing information.

In some cases, such as when the Free Law Project did not have a specific disclosure or had not extracted data from a report, we extracted or transcribed the data manually.

After cleaning and standardizing the data, we spot-checked it for accuracy, looking primarily for transcription or categorization errors. If you believe you see an error in the database, please contact us at [email protected].

More from Friends of the Court

ProPublica has reported that justices have sometimes failed to disclose speaking engagements and gifts like private jet travel and luxury vacations from wealthy and influential people. Read our series: Friends of the Court.

Do you have any tips on the courts? Contact us securely or reach out to ProPublica reporters Justin Elliott and Josh Kaplan.

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