The recommendations by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, of Myrna Perez and Dale Ho this week to serve as judges on New York’s federal courts placed Democrats’ effort to reshape the judiciary at the forefront of a broader push to combat a state-level rollback on voting rights, attorneys and law professors said.

The selections were also seen as making good on President Joe Biden’s pledge to add both racial and experiential diversity to a federal bench that had become younger and more conservative doing the Trump administration, experts said.