Nusrat Choudhury

Attorney, National Security Project, American Civil Liberties Union Foundation

Nusrat Choudhury is a Staff Attorney in the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), where she pursues litigation challenging national security policies that violate civil rights and civil liberties. She currently develops legal strategies to combat racial/ethnic/religious profiling, infringements of First Amendment and other rights resulting from national security policies, and represents the plaintiff in Meshal v. Higgenbotham, No. 07 Civ. 2178 (D.D.C.), a lawsuit contesting the illegal detention, rendition, and threats of torture against a U.S. citizen by U.S. government officials in East Africa. Nusrat litigated Jarrar v. Harris, No. 07 Civ. 3299 (E.D.N.Y.), which challenged racial discrimination and the violation of the First Amendment rights of an Iraqi-born passenger on JetBlue Airways and settled for one of the largest public settlements in an airline profiling case.

Nusrat was previously a Marvin M. Karpatkin Fellow at the ACLU’s Racial Justice Program, a law clerk to Judge Barrington D. Parker of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, and a law clerk to Judge Denise Cote of the Southern District of New York. Nusrat has also worked for the Women’s Prison Association & Home, Spence-Chapin Services to Families and Children, the Office of the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in the Hague. Nusrat received her BA from Columbia University , her MPA from Princeton University ’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and her JD from Yale Law School .