The internal conflict between career Justice Department attorneys and Bush’s political appointees is getting progressively more serious. It seems as if career staffers were willing to put up with an ideological agenda for a while, but they’re sick of it now and ready to create some headaches for the top brass.
DoJ officials recently leaked word, for example, that attorneys in the in the Civil Rights Division concluded that Georgia’s poll-tax law was discriminatory against minority voters and should be blocked from implementation, but they were quickly overruled by Bush-appointed higher-ups. Moreover, the lead attorney in the government’s landmark lawsuit against the tobacco industry recently told reporters that her politically appointed bosses undermined her team’s work on the case.
And the hits just keep on coming. Today, the Washington Post reports on leaked memos showing the DoJ officials concluded, unanimously, that Tom DeLay’s re-redistricting scheme in Texas violated the Voting Rights Act — but once again they were overruled by Bush’s political appointees.
Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.
The memo, unanimously endorsed by six lawyers and two analysts in the department’s voting section, said the redistricting plan illegally diluted black and Hispanic voting power in two congressional districts. It also said the plan eliminated several other districts in which minorities had a substantial, though not necessarily decisive, influence in elections.
“The State of Texas has not met its burden in showing that the proposed congressional redistricting plan does not have a discriminatory effect,” the memo concluded.
The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options. But the Texas legislature proceeded with the new map anyway because it would maximize the number of Republican federal lawmakers in the state, the memo said.
The WaPo added that, under normal circumstances, recommendation memos usually “carry great weight within the Justice Department,” and are not rejected. Mark Posner, a longtime Justice Department lawyer who now teaches law at American University, said it was “highly unusual” for political appointees to overrule a unanimous finding such as the one in the Texas case.
You don’t suppose Republican politics played a role here, do you?
Aside from the substance of the argument, this is yet another telling example that career officials at the Justice Department just aren’t willing to tolerate ideological nonsense anymore. The message to Bush appointees is as subtle as a sledgehammer — you play politics with the law, and we’ll embarrass you on the front page of the Washington Post. Good for them.