Gutting civil rights enforcement

July 24, 2006

For literally decades, the [tag]Justice Department[/tag]’s [tag]Civil Rights[/tag] Division has had a hiring committee, made up of veteran career lawyers, who screened thousands of resumes, interviewed candidates, and made recommendations that were rarely rejected. Attorneys who were hired to the Division were not only excellent lawyers, but had demonstrated a firm commitment and years of experience in protecting civil rights.

That was before Bush took over. In 2002, then-attorney general John [tag]Ashcroft[/tag] changed the procedures that had been in place for a couple of generations. Now the president’s political appointees are in charge of the process, and as the Boston Globe explained in a must-read article, Bushies have “effectively turned hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions” — filled with conservatives who are less-than-committed to civil rights [tag]enforcement[/tag].

The profile of the lawyers being hired has since changed dramatically, according to the resumes of successful applicants to the voting rights, employment litigation, and appellate sections…. Hires with traditional civil rights backgrounds — either civil rights litigators or members of civil rights groups — have plunged. Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.

Meanwhile, conservative credentials have risen sharply. Since 2003 the three sections have hired 11 lawyers who said they were members of the conservative Federalist Society. Seven hires in the three sections are listed as members of the Republican National Lawyers Association, including two who volunteered for [tag]Bush[/tag]-Cheney campaigns.

Several new hires worked for prominent conservatives, including former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, former attorney general Edwin Meese, Mississippi Senator Trent Lott, and Judge Charles Pickering. And six listed Christian organizations that promote socially conservative views.

The consequences of the Bush-imposed political changes have been dramatic, not only in the staff, but in what kinds of cases the staff pursues.

At the same time, the kinds of cases the Civil Rights Division is bringing have undergone a shift. The division is bringing fewer voting rights and employment cases involving systematic discrimination against African-Americans, and more alleging reverse discrimination against whites and religious discrimination against Christians.

“There has been a sea change in the types of cases brought by the division, and that is not likely to change in a new administration because they are hiring people who don’t have an expressed interest in traditional civil rights enforcement,” said Richard Ugelow, a 29-year career veteran who left the division in 2002.

This matters. When voting-rights attorneys looked at Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme, they said it violated civil-rights law. Bush’s political appointees overruled them. When voting-rights attorneys considered Georgia’s absurd voting procedures law, and found it unsatisfactory, Bush’s lawyers intervened and overruled them again.

The result is not only low morale and a less effective office, but a situation in which some of the nation’s finest civil-rights lawyers are quitting the department rather than put up with Bushies’ nonsense.

At a recent NAACP hearing on the state of the Civil Rights Division, David Becker , who was a voting-rights section attorney for seven years before accepting the buyout offer, warned that the personnel changes threatened to permanently damage the nation’s most important civil rights watchdog.

“Even during other administrations that were perceived as being hostile to civil rights enforcement, career staff did not leave in numbers approaching this level,” Becker said. “In the place of these experienced litigators and investigators, this administration has, all too often, hired inexperienced ideologues, virtually none of which have any civil rights or voting rights experiences.”

Even Reagan and Nixon, who clashed on occasion with the career staff at the Civil Rights Division, wouldn’t go this far. When it comes to undermining civil rights, Bush is in a league of his own.

I wonder why the president, who spoke just last week to the NAACP about civil rights, neglected to mention all of this? I suspect his [tag]NAACP[/tag] audience might have found some of this fairly interesting.

Around 1976 C. Vann Woodward wrote an article expressing his fears that there would be an effective backlash against civil rights legislation equivalent to that after the disputed Hayes-Tilden election — which eventually led to the institution of Jim Crow laws and the ‘all-white’ southern voting populace. This did not happen then, and I, like many people, viewed him as being unneccasrily alarmist. It seemed that this was one bag the cat had totally escaped from.
I still don’t see this major a turn-around, if only because I do not expect the current abberation of government won’t last long. But it is ironic that this comes after only the second election in our history decided by the Supreme Court — the deciding vote in Hayes-Tilden was Chief Justice David Davis.
The fight in the upcoming elections is a winnable one, despite the pessimistic fear of too many people on the ‘right side.’ It won’t be easy, but we can win, and stories like this show that we HAVE TO.

  • Nice to see that Bushites are using every tool available to fight “The War on Christianity”.

    Once again, the Bushites have adopted the Norquist Solution, taking every functioning part of the Federal Government and emasculating it. They’ve done FEMA, the CIA and the Military. IRS coming up too.

    Gah!

  • The Orwellian aspect of this is the Bush will inevitably claim that his actions have been good for protecting civil rights, in that far fewer cases go to court. (As Lance comments, the same is happening with the IRS pursuing tax fraud cases.)

  • “Bush is in a league of his own.”

    I know I toss the “Bush Crime Family” phrase around a lot, maybe too much. But it is the only phrase which adequately and accurately describes what is going on. There is nothing this gang holds sacred. No holds barred. They have no respect for any law, any tradition, any person. Complete dominance, by any means, with the goal of robbing the nation of as much tax money as they can stuff into the accounts of themselves and their obscenely wealthy friends.

    I can’t think of anything like it — at least on this scale — in US history. Gives a whole new meaning to “Bush League”, doesn’t it.

  • Bushies have “effectively turned hundreds of career jobs into politically appointed positions.”

    This is the kind of damage Bush has done elsewhere that goes unnoticed by all but the bureaucrats, but may be the most sinister and difficult to undo (should Dems figure out how to win the Presidency). Civil rights enforcement is now politicized (an oxymoron?) and run by hacks who probably have no idea what’s involved? Great. For all the grief dumped on them, bureaucrats do bring experience to their work and lend some consistency across administrations.

  • I have the image of Al Pacino from Scarface running through my head. With his world crumbling, he buries his head in a small mountain of coke, then goes on a coked up ramage. Who will they cast to play Bush? Crispin Glover?

    Bush’s idea of leadership

  • Only 19 of the 45 lawyers hired since 2003 in those three sections were experienced in civil rights law, and of those, nine gained their experience either by defending employers against discrimination lawsuits or by fighting against race-conscious policies.

    I thought the Repubs were in favor of “meritocracy” and opposed to “affirmative action”

  • The clock is running; a Dem-majority on the Hill in ’06 could conceivably remove the cancerous infestation currently residing in the WH some 20+ months earlier than planned. I don’t know why, but “Springtime for Hitler” keeps popping up….

  • Politics and rewarding cronies is what this administration is about. Not only do they not care for policy they don’t care for qualifications. In 8 years they are going to turn working for the government into a dirty joke. Of course considering huges sawths of their consituencies hate the government and think it is a joke makes it all the more understandable. Public service is going to be seen as a means to a political end. Hopefully the next president, whoever that is, will right the imbalance.

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