President Joe Biden’s nomination Wednesday of U.S. District Judge Alison J. Nathan to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit marked the first time that the Biden administration has looked to elevate a sitting federal judge to the Manhattan-based appeals court.

If she is confirmed, the 49-year-old Nathan, of the Southern District of New York, would become just the second openly lesbian woman to serve as a federal appeals court judge, after the Senate earlier this month approved the nomination of Beth Robinson, a former associate justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, to serve on the same court.