President Biden Nominates First Female Muslim Federal Judge
Washington, DC: President Biden on Wednesday nominated Nusrat Jahan Choudhury to serve as federal judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
If confirmed by the Senate, Choudhury would become the first Muslim woman and the first Bangladeshi American to serve as a federal judge. She would be the second Muslim person to serve.
Choudhury is the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois. She has also worked with the ACLU in New York, according to a White House press release.
She graduated from the Yale Law School in 2006. She received her master's of public administration from Princeton University and her bachelor's degree from Columbia University.
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 US 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 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.
Choudhury emerged as the top choice among Muslim American advocates last summer for one of New York's federal court vacancies; Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer backed her as an expert in civil rights and liberties.
Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights organization, wrote in a July letter to Schumer and New York Sen Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY, that Choudhury has a "stellar reputation" for advancing the rights of minority communities and that her nomination would make much-needed history.
