CHICAGO – Earlier today, the United States Senate confirmed the nomination of Nusrat Jahan Choudhury to the federal district court for the Eastern District of New York. Ms. Choudhury has served as the Legal Director for the ACLU of Illinois since January 2020. She becomes the first Bangladeshi American and the first Muslim American woman confirmed to the federal bench. The following can be attributed to Colleen Connell, executive director of the ACLU of Illinois:
We congratulate Nusrat Choudhury on this well-earned accomplishment and wish her nothing but the best. Nusrat joins a proud tradition of legendary ACLU advocates, notably Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who step away from advocacy to don a black robe and defend our Constitution.
Nusrat’s tenure with the ACLU of Illinois is marked by her professionalism and undying commitment to advancing and protecting civil liberties. Among the many efforts she led at the ACLU of Illinois, in her first weeks, Nusrat led a coalition of organizations with diverse views—including the ACLU and the Cato Institute—in an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in Fulton v. Chicago, bankruptcy cases concerning the City’s practice of seizing residents’ cars for unpaid fines, which has propelled tens of thousands of people into bankruptcy. During the Covid pandemic, Nusrat led efforts across Illinois to protect medically vulnerable people from dangerous conditions while detained in county jails pending immigration proceedings. Nusrat also served as counsel to community organizations in a coalition enforcing a federal consent decree enacted to reform Chicago police patterns of excessive force, and worked to ensure that Chicago community groups were included as leaders of an effort to gather input from directly impacted Black and Latino communities on Chicago police conduct stops and frisks.
As a matter of organizational policy, the ACLU did not support or comment on Nus’ nomination as it traveled through the process in the Senate. But today we can say that we are simply overjoyed and proud of our colleague and her opportunity to serve the country and serve the cause of justice.