Nusrat Choudhury makes history as 1st Bangladeshi American, female Muslim federal judge
By Bryan Ke
June 16, 2023
Civil rights lawyer Nusrat Choudhury made history on Thursday when the U.S. Senate appointed her as a federal judge in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Making history: Choudhury, a legal director with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Illinois, became the first Bangladeshi American and first female Muslim federal judge in the United States when she narrowly won the seat with 50-49 votes.
Choudhury is the second Muslim American to serve as a federal judge in U.S. history following Zahid Quraishi, a U.S. District Judge for the District of New Jersey.
Judicial nominees: Choudhury was among the eight “extraordinarily qualified and experienced” individuals President Joe Biden nominated in January 2022.
She is replacing Judge Joseph Bianco, whom George W. Bush appointed on Jan. 3, 2006, and was later moved to the Second Circuit by the Trump administration in 2019.
About the federal judge: A 1998 graduate of Columbia University, Choudhury obtained her Master of Public Administration from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs in 2006 and her Juris Doctorate degree from Yale Law School that same year.
Past work: A former deputy director of the ACLU in New York’s Racial Justice Program from 2018 to 2020, Choudhury served as the nonprofit organization’s legal director in Illinois before her nomination.
ACLU response: Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the ACLU, congratulated Choudhury in a statement published on Thursday, noting that her recent achievement is an “exclamation point on her long track record of protecting civil liberties and civil rights” and referring to her as a “trailblazing civil rights lawyer with a remarkable record of advancing equal justice for all in our nation.”
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