Fox News contributor Laura Ingraham launched an ignorant smear against Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor, suggesting that she has to choose between her “immigrant family background” or the Constitution.

Ingraham's smear is both rooted in the premise that immigrants are separate from mainstream American culture and is completely off the mark given the fact that Sotomayor is an American citizen and the daughter of American citizens.

In a February 3 speech before Yale Law students, Sotomayor commented on the fact that she was the first Supreme Court Justice to use the term “undocumented immigrant,” instead of “illegal alien,” saying "[t]o call them illegal aliens seemed and does seem insulting to me."

Ingraham highlighted Sotomayor's comment on her radio show the following day. Ingraham suggested that using the term “undocumented immigrant” demonstrated a failure of Sotomayor's duty “to defend the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America.” According to Ingraham, the word choice shows that Sotomayor's “allegiance obviously goes to her immigrant family background and not to the Constitution of the United States.”

Sotomayor is a Puerto Rican American who is both an American citizen and the daughter of American citizens. Puerto Ricans have had U.S. citizenship since President Woodrow Wilson signed the Jones-Shafroth Act in 1917. Ingraham's claim that Sotomayor's heritage somehow conflicts with her mission to uphold the Constitution is both baseless and nonsensical.