Seventh Circuit Court May See Second Ever Black Judge

WASHINGTON— A former federal public defender has been chosen to be on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago. On Tuesday, President Joe Biden picked his first few federal judicial nominees. Among them, Candace Jackson-Akiwumi, who worked in Chicago for ten years as a staff attorney at the federal defender program in the Northern District of Illinois.

President Biden also nominated an intellectual and patent attorney from Perkins Coie LLP in Chicago, Tiffany Cunningham. Her nomination is for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the Federal Circuit in Washington.

During his campaign, Biden promised he would nominate a Black woman to fill the first available vacancy on the Supreme Court. Tuesday's judicial nominees are part of that push to diversify the largely white, male nominees from the former President Donald Trump.

Currently the Seventh Circuit has no Black judges of any gender. If confirmed, Jackson-Akiwumi would be just the second judge of color on the Seventh Circuit. The first, Judge Ann Claire Williams, retired in 2018.

Biden called his slate of nominees "trailblazing" and said, "Each is deeply qualified and prepared to deliver justice faithfully under our Constitution and impartially to the American people — and together they represent the broad diversity of background, experience, and perspective that makes our nation strong."

Biden nominated 10 federal circuit and district court nominees, and one person to be a District of Columbia superior court judge.

Jackson-Akiwumi is a graduate of Princeton University and Yale Law School. Cunningham received her degree in chemical engineering from MIT and her J.D. from Harvard Law School.

The White House called Biden’s initial picks “groundbreaking nominees, including three African American women chosen for Circuit Court vacancies, as well as candidates who, if confirmed, would be the first Muslim American federal judge in U.S. history, the first AAPI woman to ever serve on the U.S. District Court for the District of D.C., and the first woman of color to ever serve as a federal judge for the District of Maryland.”