WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Joe Biden announced Friday that federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson is his nominee for the Supreme Court.
She is the first Black woman ever nominated to the nation's highest court and has ties to South Florida.
"The need for diversity on the highest court is long overdue," said attorney Nicole Hunt Jackson.
MORE: 5 things to know about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
The legal community in Palm Beach County is buzzing with excitement over Jackson's nomination to the highest court of the land.
"Those of us in the profession want to see the bench more representative of diverse backgrounds and experience," Nicole Hunt Jackson said. "This is just the beginning of what we're going to see moving forward."
Ketanji Brown Jackson graduated from Miami's Palmetto Senior High School in 1988.
She was on the debate team and student body president while in high school.
Her father was the chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board and her mother was a principal at New World School of the Arts in Miami.
WPTV spoke to members of the Road to the Bench Academy about the nomination.
The academy is a nonpartisan training and mentorship program to encourage diversity on the bench.
"I just want to highlight once again [that] she's qualified because I am quite sure people are going to say, 'Oh, this is an affirmative action pick or she is only being selected because she's Black,'" said Aisha Nash, an attorney at the Road to the Bench Academy. "She is very qualified, and it makes me want to continue doing the work that I do, continue getting all the education and the experience that I can, so one day I can follow in her footsteps."
"Seeing her figure there, her ability to comb and digest issues that are important to our community and to our democracy as a whole, it's really the greatest accomplishment we can get right now," said Victoria Mesa-Estrada, chair for diversity & inclusion at the Palm Beach County Bar Association.
If confirmed, Jackson would be one of four women to sit together on the nine-member court.
