Senate Confirms First Female Muslim Federal Judge
6-21-2023
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The Senate has confirmed Nusrat Choudhury as the first Muslim woman to serve as a US federal judge, one year after President Joe Biden’s nomination.
Judge Choudhury, most recently the legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, was confirmed 50-49 on a mostly party-line vote.
“Nusrat Choudhury is a trailblazing civil rights lawyer with a remarkable record of advancing equal justice for all in our nation,” Anthony Romero, ACLU’s executive director, said in a statement.
He added that the confirmation is “an exclamation point on her long track record of protecting civil liberties and civil rights.”
Choudhury will become the first Muslim woman and first Bangladeshi American in history to serve as a federal judge and only the third ACLU lawyer to go directly onto the federal bench as Article III judges.
Prior to joining the ACLU of Illinois, 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.
Choudhury is the second American Muslim to be nominated by the Biden administration to the position of a federal judge.
In June, 2021, Zahid Quraishi was confirmed by the US Senate to serve as a judge for the US District Court for the District of New Jersey.
Her historic confirmation highlights the lack of diversity among federal judges, by race and ethnicity, and gender.
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