The US Senate approved Nusrat Choudhury as a federal judge on Thursday, making her the first Muslim woman and the first Bangladeshi-American to serve on the federal bench.

Choudhury, the legal director of the ACLU of Illinois, was confirmed as the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York on a 50-49 vote, reports CNN.

President Joe Biden nominated the civil rights attorney as one of seven federal judge candidates in January 2022. Biden appointed Zahid Quraishi as a district judge for New Jersey earlier in 2021, making him the first Muslim American federal judge in US history.

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Choudhury, as the legal director of ACLU, has fought for police reform and litigated against discriminatory methods, said the report.

According to the ACLU, among the problems she has taken on include the New York Police Department's post-9/11 monitoring techniques, which have been denounced as discriminating towards Muslim Americans, and the Milwaukee Police Department's stop-and-frisk program.

“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. “The confirmation is an exclamation point on her long track record of protecting civil liberties and civil rights.”

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Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat, voted against her confirmation because he believed some of her earlier statements made her prejudiced against police enforcement, the report also said.

“As a staunch supporter of our men and women in uniform, I opposed Ms Choudhury’s nomination,” Manchin said in a statement.

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