The new Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Thomas Perez, blasted the Bush administration's stewardship of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department today at an American Constitution Society event, reprising the "buffet line" quip he used yesterday but far more directly. In his speech, Perez said that in preparing to take the reigns of the civil rights division, "I learned, to my great disappointment, that those who had been entrusted with the keys to the division, and to its great power to pursue justice, treated the division instead like a buffet line at the cafeteria, cherry‐picking which laws to enforce."
Then he hit the bullet points, saying of the previous administration:
• The division pursued very few pattern or practice cases in the employment context.
• Despite considerable evidence of abusive, discriminatory behavior by lenders and underwriters that contributed to the foreclosure crisis, the division did not make use of critical tools in its law enforcement arsenal (The Fair Housing Act, Equal Credit Opportunity Act) to hold lenders accountable.
• In the Clinton administration, the Appellate Section filed 643 briefs in Courts of Appeal; in the Bush administration, the figure fell to 424. And appellate attorneys in the division were conscripted into devoting time and resources to defending the department in immigration appeals, rather than defending the division’s enforcement activities.
•In the Clinton administration, the disability rights section brought 228 lawsuits,compared with 126 in the Bush administration.
•In the Clinton administration, the housing section brought 676 cases, compared with 324 cases in the Bush administration.
•In the Clinton administration, the voting section filed 35 Section 2 cases, compared with 15 filings in the Bush administration.
• In Fiscal Year 2006, the division prosecuted the lowest number (10) of hate crime cases in more than a decade.
The open secret of the civil rights division is that the battle over whether or not the division should fulfill its traditional role didn't end with the departure of the previous administration, but continues as Republicans try to pursue their agenda from the outside by various means. Perez' speech will be seen as another shot across the bow by conservatives who are now trying to undermine the work of the civil rights division by painting the Obama era as equally politicized as the Bush era -- a charge that is absolutely baseless.
-- A. Serwer
