President Joe Biden nominated 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 diversity (article available here).
Nusrat Jahan Choudhury, 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 American Civil Liberties Union 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 the 83 Biden's federal judiciary nominees have been women, including seven of the eight new nominees. The new group 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 are public defenders.
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%).
Other new nominees are:
- Tiffany Cartwright, a partner at the civil rights law firm MacDonald Hoague & Bayless, for the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington.
- Ana Isabel de Alba, a California Superior Court judge in Fresno County for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California.
- Robert Steven Huie, an attorney at a law firm, for the the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
- Natasha Merle, deputy director of litigation at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., for the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
- Jennifer Rearden, a partner at a law firm, for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
- Nina Nin-Yuen Wang, a U.S. magistrate judge for the District of Colorado, for the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado.