Obama Nominee Would Be First Black Woman To Join Washington DC Trial Court In 30 Years

ThinkProgress

Nearly half of Washington, DC’s residents are black, yet an African-American woman has not served on the federal trial court that presides over the District of Columbia since 2003, when former Chief Judge Norma Holloway Johnson stepped down from the federal bench. Yesterday, President Obama took the first step towards rectifying this by nominating Sentencing Commission member Ketanji Brown Jackson to a seat on the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. If confirmed, Jackson will be the first black woman to join this court in over thirty years, when Judge Johnson took the bench. President Clinton also nominated a black woman, Rhonda Fields, to the same court, but she was not confirmed by the GOP-controlled Senate.