Federalist: Five of 15 US Judges in D.C. Foreign-Born

One-third of the 15 judges in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where many of the cases are being heard over President Donald Trump's actions, were born outside the United States, according to a new report.

The five judges who were born outside the U.S. were appointed by former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, The Federalist reported on Wednesday. The District still has 10 older judges who sometimes hear cases. Their nominations date back as far as President Ronald Reagan's tenure in the 1980s, and all were born in the United States.

According to the Constitution, there are no specific requirements that must be met, including being a natural-born citizen, to be named as a judge.

The Constitution also does not list qualifications, such as prior service as a judge or possessing a law degree, to be named to judicial positions other than on the Supreme Court, according to Judicature, of Duke University.

The foreign-born judges in the D.C. District are:

Judge Tanya Chutkan, born in Kingston, Jamaica. She came to the U.S. in 1979 and attended George Washington University and obtained her law degree from the University of Pennsylvania, but did not serve as a judge before her appointment by Obama. In addition to overseeing the legal challenge to the Department of Government Efficiency's work to slash government spending, she has presided over cases involving Trump, including overseeing his criminal trial in connection with the 2020 presidential election.
Judge Amit P. Mehta, appointed by Obama, was born in Patan, India. He was appointed in 2014 and has a law degree from the University of Virginia but had no previous experience as a judge. He came to the United States as an infant with his parents. He is to oversee four Jan. 6 civil cases against Trump.
Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes, nominated in 2021, was born in Uruguay and grew up in Louisville, Kentucky. She was not a judge before Biden nominated her. She holds a law degree from Harvard University and is the first openly LGBTQ Hispanic woman to be appointed to the court. She presided over an objection to an executive order from Trump that declared "gender dysphoria" as inconsistent with standards for troop readiness, blocking the order through a preliminary injunction.
Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, another Biden appointee, is the first Muslim and Arab American to serve on the D.C. District Court. He was born and raised in Canada to Egyptian parents and became a U.S. citizen in 2019. He holds a law degree from Harvard but was not a judge before his appointment in 2024. He volunteered for Biden's 2020 transition team and worked in support of his campaign. He has written about Trump's 2017 executive order restricting travel to the United States from seven predominantly Muslim countries, stating that “prejudice and intolerance" were “the very hallmark of [Trump’s] campaign against Muslims." In more recent actions, Ali restored $2 billion in spending to foreign nonprofit contractors by the U.S. Agency for International Development that had been on pause for 90 days.
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan was Biden's final appointee and was sworn in on Jan. 2, 2025, just before Biden left office. She was born in Trinidad and Tobago in 1983 and graduated from Brooklyn Law School in 2010. Sooknanan worked as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor and as the principal deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice under the Biden administration. She also had not previously been a judge. Last week, Sooknanan ordered Democrat Susan Grundmann to be reinstated to the Federal Labor Relations Authority, keeping a Democratic majority on the board.