President Biden on Friday announced three more nominees to serve on California’s federal courts, including the first gay judge, the first Chinese-American woman and the second Latina on their respective courts.
If confirmed, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Dainel Calabretta would be the first openly gay judge to serve on the US District Court for the Eastern District of California, according to a White House press release. Calabretta was among Biden’s eight announced nominees to serve on the federal courts and each must be approved by the US Senate, needing 51 votes to be confirmed.
Biden also nominated Judge Rita Lin and attorney Araceli Martínez-Olguín for the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. If confirmed, Lin will be the second Asian American Pacific Islander woman and the first Chinese American woman to serve on the court. Martínez-Olguín would be the second Latina.
The latest batch of nominees represents the 24th time Biden has nominated people for federal judicial posts, bringing the total number of federal nominees to 132.
Calabretta became the first openly gay man appointed to Sacramento County Superior Court in 2019. Previously, Calabretta served as former Governor Jerry Brown undersecretary for legal affairs as of 2013. He was also an Assistant Attorney General in the California Department of Justice from 2008 to 2013.
Calabretta was an associate of Munger Tolles in Los Angeles from 2005 to 2008 and clerked for Justice John Paul Stevens on the US Supreme Court, according to the White House press release. She received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University and her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School in 2003.
Lin has been a judge on the San Francisco County Superior Court since 2018 and was an assistant US attorney for the Northern District of California from 2014 to 2018, according to the White House. She was a partner at Morrison and Forester LLP and a law clerk to Judge Sandra Lynch on the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
Martinez-Olguin has been an attorney at the National Immigration Law Center since 2018 and previously worked at the Immigrant Rights Project at Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto. She was an attorney with the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Legal Aid at Work’s National Origin and Immigrant Rights Program.
The Biden White House highlighted his streak of diverse nominees, saying the election “ensures that the nation’s courts reflect the diversity that is one of our greatest assets as a country, both in terms of personal and professional backgrounds.”
Biden also nominated julie rickelman, an abortion rights attorney who recently represented the Mississippi clinic at the center of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade Act of 1973 that established the federal right to abortion. Rikelman was nominated to the US Circuit Court for the First Circuit and serves as US Litigation Director for the Center for Reproductive Rights. She was previously a vice president of litigation at NBC Universal, a senior associate at Simpson Thatcher & Bartlett LLP, and an associate at Feldman & Orlansky.
This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.