WASHINGTON (AP) – President Joe Biden on Tuesday unveiled his first slate of judicial nominees, a racially diverse and mostly female field that is a sharp departure from the largely white and male picks during Donald Trump’s administration.
Biden’s group includes candidates who, if confirmed by the U.S. Senate, would be the first Muslim federal judge in U.S. history, the first Asian American Pacific Islander woman to serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and the first woman of color to serve as a federal judge for the District of Maryland.
Three of the picks are Black women who were nominated to the federal courts of appeals, a pathway to the Supreme Court. The most prominent of the three is U.S. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom Biden says he will nominate to the seat left vacant on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit by Judge Merrick Garland’s departure to become Attorney General.
The D.C. Circuit, in particular, is a place where presidents have searched for Supreme Court justices. Three of the high court’s current nine members have served on the D.C. Circuit.
Biden pledged during the campaign to nominate a Black woman to the high court if a vacancy opens during his term.