This Day in History: 2017-12-09
December 8, 2009 – “U.S. Agrees to Settle Lawsuit Brought by Native Americans for $3.4 Billion”
The United States federal government announced that it intends to pay $3.4 billion to settle claims that it has mismanaged the revenue in American Indian trust funds. In 2012, it finalized this settlement, ending one of the largest and most complicated class-action lawsuits ever brought against the United States. The lawsuit lasted 15 years in total and involved hundreds of thousands of land trust accounts that date back to the 19th century. Specialists in federal tribal law described the suit as one of the most important in the history of legal disputes involving the government’s treatment of American Indians.
May 26, 2009 - "Sonia Sotomayor Nominated for U.S. Supreme Court" President Barack Obama, the nation's first African-American President, nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the U.S. Supreme Court. Once her nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, she became the first Latinx to be appointed to the Supreme Court. Sotomayor is the third woman to serve on the high court. She graduated from Princeton University summa cum laude and went to Yale Law School. At Yale, she served as an editor at the Yale Law Journal.