High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The demographics of the Supreme Court of the United States encompass the gender, ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds of the 112 justices appointed to the Supreme Court. Certain of these characteristics have been raised as an issue since the Court was established in 1789. For its first 180 years, justices were almost always white male Protestants. Prior to the 20th century, a few Roman Catholics were appointed, but concerns about diversity of the Court were mainly in terms of geographic diversity, to represent all geographic regions of the country, as opposed to ethnic, religious, or gender diversity. The 20th century saw the first appointment of a Jewish justice (Louis Brandeis, 1916), an African-American (Thurgood Marshall, 1967) and a woman (Sandra Day O`Connor, 1981). The 21st century saw the first appointment of a Hispanic justice (Sonia Sotomayor, 2009; if one excludes Benjamin Cardozo).