President Joe Biden intends to nominate a Muslim woman for a federal judgeship for the first time in U.S. history Wednesday as part of his administration's push to reshape the federal judiciary with historic diversity.
Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, is Biden's nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. If confirmed by the Senate, Choudhury would become the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge and the first Bangladeshi-American.
Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, is Biden's nominee for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York. If confirmed by the Senate, Choudhury would become the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge and the first Bangladeshi-American.
Choudhury, who previously worked at the ACLU in New York, would be just the second Muslim-American federal judge
after the Senate confirmed Zahid Quraishi – another Biden nominee – to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey in June.
Sixty-two of Biden's federal judiciary nominees have been women, including seven of the eight new nominees. The new group also includes two Black women, a Taiwanese immigrant, an Asian-American, a Latina and one nominee who identifies as Asian American, Latino and white. Three nominees are civil rights lawyers, two are labor lawyers and two public defenders.
Biden is also nominating Arianna Freeman, a federal public defender in Philadelphia, to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Pennsylvania. Freeman is the eighth Black woman Biden has nominated as a federal appellate judge, matching the total number of Black women who have ever served as federal appellate judges. Freeman would become the first African-American to ever serve on the Third Circuit.
In his first year in office, Biden won Senate confirmations of 41 of his federal judge nominees, the most of any president during their first 12 months since John F. Kennedy.
Twenty-four of Biden's judicial nominees have been Black (29%), 17 have been Hispanic (20%) and 16 have been Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (19%).
SOURCE: USA Today
IMAGE SOURCE:
BBC.COM
