[escapefromboston]

Gonzalez would be a historic "first" Hispanic Supreme Court Justice

-Why is first in quotation marks? He would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice. I can see she wants to make light of that, but then shouldn't historic be the word put in quotations? He would literally be the first but, from her point of view, it wouldn't be very historic.
I don't think its very important that he is Hispanic but he would still be the first, unless I am missing a previous Judge who was of Hispanic decent.

[dangus]

She could have put the scare quotes around Hispanic, but...

There was a Portuguese (and yes, Portuguese is considered Hispanic) SC justice in the 1930's named Benjamin Cardozo. What she is saying is that even though he is ot technically the first Hispanic, his appointment would still be one of those minority-group breakthroughs.