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Sonia Sotomayor (2015)

Associate justice since Aug. 8, 2009

← Back to overview View 2015 Disclosure PDF

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
Nov. 16 – 17, 2015 University of Richmond Richmond, VA Meetings, Speaking

Q&A conversation with faculty and students, meeting with Virginia Supreme Court justices

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Oct. 22 – 23, 2015 University of the Pacific Stockton, CA Conference/Symposium

Participation in Advancing Women’s Leadership conference

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Oct. 21 – 22, 2015 Pomona College Claremont, CA Speaking

Question and answer conversation with faculty and students

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Sept. 1 – 3, 2015 University of Notre Dame South Bend, IN Speaking

Address, question and answer conversation, meeting with students, meeting with faculty

Food, Lodging, Transportation
May 7 – 8, 2015 The Mount Sinai Hospital New York, NY Ceremony

Address accepting honorary degree at commencement

Food, Transportation
March 12 – 13, 2015 Davidson College Davidson, NC Speaking

Discussions with groups of faculty and students

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Dec. 21, 2015 The University Club of New York New York, NY Speaking

Moderated interview

Food
Dec. 11, 2015 New York University New York, NY Speaking

Address to Latino Law Students Association

Food, Transportation
Sept. 9, 2015 Springfield Public Forum Springfield, MA Speaking

Moderated interview

Food, Lodging, Transportation
Sept. 8, 2015 Amherst College Amherst, MA Speaking

Question and answer conversation with faculty and students

Food, Lodging, Transportation
July 23, 2015 Bronx Children’s Museum Bronx, NY Other

Participation in Dream Big Day events

Food
May 7, 2015 New York City Bar Association New York, NY Speaking

Address to New Lawyers Institute

Food
April 17, 2015 Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr, PA Ceremony

Address accepting Katharine Hepburn Medal

Food, Transportation
April 10, 2015 Columbia University New York, NY Speaking

Discussion with faculty and meeting with Latino Law Students Association

Food, Transportation
March 13, 2015 New York University New York, NY Book Event

Panel discussion on Burt Neuborne’s book “Madison’s Music”

Food, Transportation
Feb. 2, 2015 Forum Club of the Palm Beaches and Palm Beach County Bar Association West Palm Beach, FL Speaking

Address

Food, 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 whose aggregate value from the same source exceeds a certain threshold ($480 in 2023) within the reporting period and gifts that are individually worth more than 40% of that threshold. This only captures gifts that have been disclosed, which ProPublica reporting shows can be incomplete. Show more.

No gifts

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
JPMorgan Chase & Co. Mortgage

Rental property, New York, NY

$250,001 – $500,000

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 2015. 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.

Part III - As I received no “Non-lnvestment Income” in 2015, Part III is marked “None”. Furthermore, I have been advised by the Knopf Doubleday Group, publisher of my memoir, “My Beloved World”, that it disbursed no funds during 2015 to promote the sale of the book.

Part IV - Item 9 - Transportation for this event was provided by private plane owned by the sponsor, The University of Notre Dame.

Part IV - Items 10 and 11 - The sponsors of these events shared the cost of transportation and lodging.

Part IV - Item 11 - MassMutual Life Insurance Company was an additional “Presenting Sponsor” of this event.

Part IV - Items 12 and 13 - The sponsors of these events shared the cost of transportation and lodging.

Part VII - Item 1 - Account was closed as of January 9, 2015. Income and value were both below level requiring reporting.

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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