Shocker: Civil Rights Agency Did Not Discriminate Against Conservatives, Whites

[Lakhota]

By Adam Serwer

During the Bush administration, the Justice Department's civil rights division was run like a partisan fiefdom. Career civil rights lawyers were pushed out and phantom threats, such as in-person voter fraud, were chased relentlessly. During the Obama administration, according to civil rights groups, the division has regained its effectiveness and renewed its mission of protecting Americans against discrimination. "We think the integrity of the division has been restored," says Nancy Zirkin, vice president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

Republican critics, not surprisingly, have been less enthusiastic. They claim the division is still a political snake pit—but now one in which conservatives are under attack—and have accused the division's voting section of engaging in partisan gamesmanship by screening hires for ideology, trying to block Freedom of Information Act requests from conservative organizations, and choosing which civil rights laws to enforce based on racial and political preferences.

A report released Tuesday by the Justice Department Inspector General's office, the department's internal auditor, leaves most of the GOP criticism in shambles. At the same time, it depicts a section badly injured by past partisan warfare between staffers. The current head of the civil rights division, Thomas Perez, is a leading candidate to be the next secretary of labor, and the report could bolster his chances of reaching Obama's cabinet. Still, Republicans will find ammo in some of the report's conclusions, particularly the IG's criticism that a few staffers were hostile to the idea of bringing cases against minority defendants. Here are some of the highlights:

Politicizing civil rights enforcement: Under Bush, an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) found that political appointees in the division broke civil service laws by vetting hires for Republican credentials. Internal emails showed the political leadership exchanging racist jokes and handing plum assignments to staffers perceived as conservatives. Experienced civil rights attorneys left the division in droves, and enforcement of civil rights laws declined. "It wasn't just that they had a different idea of enforcing the law, it's that they were punitive," says a former Justice Department official. "If you didn't agree with their ideology, they went after you. They were at war with the division itself." The new report bolsters that account, noting an incident in which conservative attorneys targeted a female colleague with "highly offensive and inappropriate sexual comments" and mocked her for being "pro-black."

The New Black Panther Party: The new report undercuts a key GOP charge: That the division went easy on a small group known as the New Black Panther Party case because the defendants were black. On election day in 2008, two members of the NBPP showed up at a polling place in a mostly black precinct in Philadelphia. One held a baton. The incident was filmed by GOP poll watchers, and the video went viral. When the voting section narrowed the case by focusing only on the baton wielder rather than the NBPP as a whole, congressional Republicans held up the case as proof the division was racked with "widespread politicization and corruption."

Yet the Inspector General's report, like a previous OPR report, found that the decision to narrow the New Black Panther case was "based on a good faith assessment of the law and facts of the case," not on anti-white racism or corruption. The report also concludes that the political leadership at Justice did influence the handling of the New Black Panther case—but not improperly—by insisting that that the case could not be dismissed outright. This turns the GOP attack on its head, for Republican critics have accused the Obama administration of trying to bury the case to protect a black separatist group. The IG notes no such thing was done.

Selective enforcement: The IG found that the evidence "did not support a conclusion that the Voting Section has improperly favored or disfavored any particular group of voters." That conclusion, it's worth noting, applies to the full 13 years since 2000—including the period during the Bush administration when the division's leadership of the civil rights division tried to force staffers deemed liberal out of the civil rights division. The report suggests that the Bush administration's years-long effort to pack the voting section yielded no actual changes in enforcement.

More (w/Live Supporting Links): Shocker: Civil Rights Agency Did Not Discriminate Against Conservatives, Whites | Mother Jones

 

[Lakhota]

The report also concludes that the political leadership at Justice did influence the handling of the New Black Panther case—but not improperly—by insisting that that the case could not be dismissed outright. This turns the GOP attack on its head, for Republican critics have accused the Obama administration of trying to bury the case to protect a black separatist group. The IG notes no such thing was done.

From the OP link.