Biden nominates Bangladeshi-American Nusrat as federal judge

US President Joe Biden has nominated Bangladeshi-American Nusrat Jahan Choudhury to be the first Muslim woman to serve as a federal judge in the United States.

Choudhury’s nomination – if confirmed, she would be just the second Muslim judge, as well as first Bangladeshi-American to sit on a federal bench in the U.S. – captured most of the attention among the eight named Wednesday in Biden’s latest round of nominees chosen to reflect his promise of diversifying the judiciary, reports UNB.

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, USA Today reports..

Muslim Advocates, a national civil rights organization, wrote in a July letter to Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand, the two Democratic senators of New York, that Choudhury has a “stellar reputation” for advancing the rights of minority communities and that her nomination would make much-needed history.

Choudhury, 44, has built a stellar record serving in various important positions with the storied American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, which calls itself “the world’s largest public interest law firm,” working across the entire spectrum of civil rights and civil liberties.

She is currently the Legal Director at the ACLU’s Illinois chapter, where she oversees a team advancing civil rights and civil liberties across Illinois. Nusrat has more than a decade of experience in advancing reform in the criminal legal system and policing. She has led litigation to protect immigrants from dangerous detention conditions and serves as counsel for community organizations enforcing a federal consent decree to reform Chicago police patterns of excessive force.

Her team advances First Amendment rights, government transparency, change in the criminal legal system and policing, voting rights, access to reproductive health care, gender equity, and the rights of LGBTQIA+ people, children in the foster system, young people in juvenile detention, and people in prisons and jails.

Prior to joining the Illinois chapter, Nusrat served as Deputy Director of the national ACLU Racial Justice Program, a staff attorney in the ACLU National Security Project, and a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow with the organization.