Abid Qureshi, the global chairman of Latham & Watkins’ pro bono practice and a litigation partner, was nominated on Tuesday to the federal district court in Washington, D.C.
Qureshi is the first Muslim lawyer nominated for a federal judgeship, according to Muslim Advocates, a civil rights legal advocacy group that has worked with Qureshi on cases in the past. That makes Qureshi’s nomination a new milestone in judicial diversity for the Obama administration as well as a potential lightning rod in a campaign in which Donald Trump has questioned whether a judge’s ethnic or religious background might affect his or her impartiality.
