Florence Y. Pan
The White House announced on March 30 that President Joe Biden declared his intent to nominate Florence Y. Pan to fill a judicial vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia (D.C.).
Pan is an attorney and jurist serving as the first Asian American Associate Judge of the D.C. Superior Court. She was appointed to the court by President Barack Obama in 2009. She received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) with distinction from Stanford Law School in 1993 and her B.A. and B.S., summa cum laude, from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988.
Rupa Ranga Puttagunta
Also nominated were administrative Judge Rupa Ranga Puttagunta, an Indian American, to the D.C. Superior Court, and U.S. Magistrate Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, of Pakistani descent, was nominated to the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey—which would make him the first Muslim American to serve on a federal district court.
Puttagunta received her J.D. from Ohio State Moritz College of Law in 2007 and her B.A. from Vassar College in 2002.
Zahid N. Quraishi
Quraishi previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey from 2008 to 2013.
He received his J.D. in 2000 from Rutgers Law School–Newark and his B.A. in 1997 from John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
The National Asian Pacific American Bar Association gave kudos to the president for the nominations.