The Biden Justice Department is facing increasing pressure to address civil rights challenges and revise the agency’s priorities in the wake of the Trump administration, with a full roster of civil rights leaders at the top.
Leading DOJ officials, confirmed in recent months, have re-committed to enforcing voting rights and tackling police misconduct across the country in an attempt to revive legal instruments that critics said were insufficient during the Trump era were used.
However, the GOP’s opposition to Biden’s civil rights activists has raised concerns that work on the issue is becoming increasingly politicized, especially as Congress weighs laws that could expand the DOJ’s power.
The Senate just confirmed it last week Kristen ClarkeKristen Clarke Senate Acknowledges Clarke First Black Woman to Head DOJ Senate for Civil Rights White House Environmental Justice Advisors Oppose Nuclear Capture Projects Biden Administration Seeks MORE Performance Standards for Federal Buildings, President BidenJoe BidenTexa’s Democrats Strike to Block the Passing of a Comprehensive Election Overhaul Package The DOJ adds four defendants to the Oath Keepers conspiracy case. Biden recalls late son Beau in the Memorial Day remarks MOREThe choice to head the Department of Civil Rights at the Department of Justice. Clarke, the first black woman to head the division, faces both routine and unique challenges her office faces in the face of mounting political tension over both suffrage and police reform.
Republican lawmakers vehemently opposed her endorsement, calling her a radical anti-police extremist despite the support of law enforcement groups and conservative figures.
GOP senators offered similar opposition to Vanita Gupta’s nomination for number three in the DOJ. Gupta, who headed the civil rights department under the Obama administration, was narrowly confirmed in a largely partisan vote.
When staff is policy, the appointments of Clarke and Gupta, both veteran civil rights attorneys joining the DOJ from prominent stakeholders, signal that the Biden administration intends to take an active approach to civil rights enforcement.
The first signs are welcome to critics of the Trump administration, which have significantly scaled back the department’s investigations into police departments and came with certain voting restrictions.
“I think the fact that the Biden government has gone out of its way not only to announce that it will have different policies but also to nominate two people who have very strong backgrounds in civil rights enforcement is great important, “said Kristy Parker, who has spent 15 years as a lawyer in the civil rights department, including as deputy chief.
“It shows that this government wants to do everything in its power to fully promote the idea that the Department of Justice’s mission is to promote equal justice for all and equality for all Americans and the enforcement of the full range of our constitutional rights To implement scope. “
So far, the DOJ has only taken a handful of measures in the area of civil rights, making it difficult for observers to see how aggressive it will be.
The Justice Department launched an extensive investigation into the Minneapolis and Louisville Police Department following the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
So far, however, the department has done little to clarify how it will handle voting rights when a flood of GOP-led states like Georgia, Texas and Flordia imposes new demands.
“I think the challenge is what fights they’ll take on. There is enough to do, ”said Gerry Hebert, senior director of the Campaign Legal Center, who has spent 20 years with the DOJ, including stints in the voting department.
In the area of police reform, the department has launched an investigation into the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, which are being deployed on a larger scale under the Obama administration and are intended to focus on departments with systematic use of force.
That leaves little clarity about the DOJ’s overall plans on this matter.
“It would be helpful to understand what the criteria are. They have essentially reopened these investigations because of an incident but are reserved for genuinely systemic problematic behavior, ”said Hernandez Stroud of the Brennan Center for Justice.
Inimai Chettiar, federal director of Justice Action Network, said she believed Clarke’s arrival will mean the department will develop a “robust strategy for how and when to initiate an investigation.”
However, she cautioned that even with picks like Clarke and Gupta, the department would be headed by the moderate attorney general Merrick Garland
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“I’m not sure the new Justice Department will be very aggressive,” she said. “I think they will be reform-oriented, but not extremely left either.”
Stroud would like the DOJ to establish standardized criteria for revoking official ID cards and creating a nationwide database to prevent officers with a dismissal history from moving from one police station to the next.
Both also want the DOJ to increase the number of conditions associated with its numerous grants to local law enforcement agencies to help drive reform.
The DOJ’s efforts in the criminal justice arena come from Congress exceeding Biden’s deadline for drafting a law to reform police – something that both Stroud and Chettiar see as the best choice not just to reform the police, but to do so To give DOJ real power to address the problem.
“I think that the existing political framework is hindering them and that there is no substantial action taken by Congress. I fear that their current ability allows them to do little to change the rotten tree that the bad apples grow out of “said Stroud.
On the right to vote, proponents see the need for Congress to push Democrat-driven laws that would give the DOJ new powers to fight restrictive state laws.
In the years since a 2013 Supreme Court ruling updated the 1965 Suffrage Act and the regime under which the DOJ was empowered to oversee state voting rules in jurisdictions that have historically discriminated against people there has been a rise in restrictive state electoral laws of paint.
Now it is the DOJ’s responsibility to bring states to justice if they believe their electoral laws are too restrictive and prove they are in violation of the Constitution.
Meanwhile, GOP-led state legislatures across the country have been spurred on by previous ones President Trump
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Some hoped the DOJ would intervene in ongoing lawsuits against Florida and Georgia bills, particularly after Biden said in March that the DOJ was “reviewing” Georgia law.
And the department is already facing calls to prepare to respond to similar laws in Texas. Eight democratic lawmakers in the state are requesting “information about the Justice Department’s efforts to protect the voting rights of Texas citizens.”
One of the DOJ’s biggest moves in relation to Biden’s franchise was to fire a warning shot in Arizona while the presidential election results are being scrutinized, and to write a letter stating that “such investigative efforts would have a significant intimidating effect on qualified voters who can deter them from voting in the future. “
Parker says the state’s legislative efforts to restrict voting rights should be the primary concern of the new DOJ leadership.
“I think this is going to be a huge challenge and really an existential challenge,” said Parker, who is now an attorney with the nonprofit group Protect Democracy. “Because if we get to a point where voices on the right and left are suppressed and the will of the voters is not even respected and honored, then we have lost our democracy. You are at the front and center of this struggle. “
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