Sotomayor 4 Latina Mag. Cover

Sonia Sotomayor heeded White House advice to paint her fingernails a neutral shade during her Supreme Court confirmation process — up to a point.

At a White House reception after her confirmation, Sotomayor showed her freshly painted red nails to President Barack Obama, along with her red-and-black semi-hoop earrings, according to an article in the new issue of Latina magazine to be released Nov. 17. Obama joked that Sotomayor had been briefed on proper nail color and earring size.

“Mr. President, you have no idea what you’ve unleashed,” Sotomayor replied, according to the article by her close friend Sandra Guzman, who was at the event.

While Obama was still deciding whom to nominate, Sotomayor wondered if the job was right for her. Just three weeks before the president announced his choice, Sotomayor confided to a friend that she was leery of losing privacy and time with her mother and wanted to withdraw her name from consideration.

“This is not about you,” attorney Lee Llambelis said he told Sotomayor. “It’s about the little girls and boys, brown and black, who live in the projects and poor communities around our nation, who can dream bigger if you are in the Supreme Court.”

Sotomayor has granted few, if any, sit-down interviews since becoming the first Hispanic justice on the Supreme Court. She did not give a formal interview to Guzman, the former editor-in-chief of Latina, but agreed to be photographed inside the Supreme Court building.

The article details Sotomayor’s personal life, including a 1983 divorce from her high school sweetheart, Kevin Noonan; a broken engagement to a Bronx contractor, Peter White, in 2000; and her most recent relationship, “a friend with no strings attached.”

Guzman said she once sought advice on her own marital problems from Sotomayor, who told her, “To find happiness in love … we have to make up our own rules.”

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