Also see below:     
Ex-Justice Dept. Lawyer Can't Recall His Role in Controversial Policies    [

    Justice Dept. Reshapes Its Civil Rights Mission
    By Neil A Lewis
    The New York Times

    Thursday 14 June 2007

    Washington - In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government's role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

    Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution's drafters did not mean to restrict.

    The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government's civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

    "Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority," Professor Landsberg said. "No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin."

    Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement that the agency had "worked diligently to enforce the federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on religion."

    The changes are evident in a variety of actions:

• Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.
  
  
• Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.
  
  
• Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.
  
  
• Taking on far fewer hate crimes and cases in which local law enforcement officers may have violated someone's civil rights. The resources for these traditional cases have instead been used to investigate trafficking cases, typically involving foreign women used in the sex trade, a favored issue of the religious right.
  
  
• Sharply reducing the complex lawsuits that challenge voting plans that might dilute the strength of black voters. The department initiated only one such case through the early part of this year, compared with eight in a comparable period in the Clinton administration.

    Along with its changed civil rights mission, the department has also tried to overhaul the roster of government lawyers who deal with civil rights. The agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while bringing in lawyers, including graduates of religious-affiliated law schools and some people vocal about their faith, who favor the new priorities. That has created some unease, with some career lawyers disdainfully referring to the newcomers as "holy hires."

    The department's emphasis has been embraced by some groups representing Muslims, Jews and especially Christian conservatives, who have long complained that the federal government ignored their grievances about discrimination.

    "We live in a society that is becoming more religiously diverse, even by the hour," said Kevin Seamus Hasson, who founded the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty 12 years ago. "So it's entirely appropriate and slightly overdue that the Justice Department is paying more attention to the various frictions that increasing religious diversity is causing in the society."

    Combating racism remains an important mission, Mr. Hasson said, but one that has changed over the years. "We can now deal with the problems of racism more effectively on a more local level," he argued. "We don't always need the federal government to come riding over the hill."

    Some religious figures, though, are more wary about the changes at the Justice Department. Robert Edgar, president of the National Council of Churches, a liberal-leaning group, agreed that it was important to take on issues like religious discrimination and human trafficking.

    But the problems of race and poverty in America "still require the highest caliber of attention," said Mr. Edgar, who cited the flawed government response to New Orleans and its mostly poor, black population after Hurricane Katrina. He said he was distrustful of the Justice Department's leadership to make appropriate decisions as to the nation's civil rights priorities.

    A New Mission

    Some critics say that many of the Justice Department's religious-oriented initiatives are outside its mandate from Congress. While statutes prohibit religious discrimination in areas like employment and housing, no laws address some of the issues in which the department has become involved.

    "They are engaging in freewheeling social engineering," said Ayesha Khan, counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and "using the power of the federal government to put in place an ideological, not constitutional agenda."

    The department declined to make available for interviews Assistant Attorney General Wan J. Kim, who heads the civil rights division, or Eric Treene, who holds the newly created position of special counsel for religious discrimination.

    Ms. Magnuson, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was justified in devoting so much attention to the issue because Congress has demonstrated its interest by including religion in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enacting the 2000 law involving zoning restrictions, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

    Ms. Magnuson also said the department had not diminished its interest in enforcing racial and national origin discrimination cases. The changes at the Justice Department began under Attorney General John Ashcroft, but have accelerated under Alberto R. Gonzales, his successor.

    Mr. Gonzales has increasingly cited his agency's record on behalf of religious causes as among his most important accomplishments, often noting the successful intervention in cases on behalf of people who had suffered discrimination for wearing Muslim head coverings. In speeches, he routinely says that religious freedom is the nation's "first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights."

    President Bush has also talked of the department's religion-related activities in appearances before religious conservatives, an important element of his support. Aside from any political benefit of satisfying conservative groups, the Justice Department's shift has brought a more subtle dividend: a defense to the criticism leveled at past Republican administrations that they were half-hearted about civil rights enforcement.

    Changing Mission

    The Bush administration has avoided that problem by changing the civil rights mission to something its Justice Department can take on with enthusiasm.

    The department has prevailed in many, if not most of the cases in which it has become involved. It has, in effect, duplicated in the religious arena its past success in cases involving race and national origin.

    At the same time, the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.

    Ms. Magnuson, the department spokeswoman, said that the civil rights division had brought more voting rights lawsuits under Mr. Bush than had been brought in the Clinton administration.

    But an examination of the Justice Department's Web site listing of the cases brought through early 2007 shows that many of them involved a different part of the law, one that requires voting materials be available in languages other than English in places with high concentrations of Asian and Hispanic voters.

    Joseph D. Rich, who recently stepped down as head of the voting rights section after a 37-year career at Justice, said that only the federal government had the resources to bring voting dilution cases, while private groups have been able to bring the language cases. The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.

    The shift in priorities at the criminal section of the civil rights division has been especially stark. The criminal section - which previously had mostly focused on hate crimes or lawsuits against police officers who may have violated someone's civil rights - began taking on human trafficking cases that had previously been handled elsewhere.

    During Mr. Bush's second term, the section brought dozens of cases against people charged under a new law with bringing women into the country to work in brothels. The new employees with religious backgrounds were enthusiastic about such cases, seeing them akin to combating slavery, a former career lawyer in the division said.

    Pursuing trafficking cases, rather than those involving hate crimes or police abuse, was seen as important to moving ahead in the department, current and former career officials said. They added that political appointees in supervisory positions frequently vetoed proposed hate crime investigations or questioned them to death.

    "You only needed for that to happen a few times and people got the message they shouldn't be eager to send up such cases," said one lawyer who would talk only on condition of anonymity.

    Rigel C. Oliveri, a law professor at the University of Missouri who worked in the civil rights division during the Clinton and early Bush years, said it became increasingly frustrating to bring what she said were worthy civil rights cases, because the political appointees would not act on them. "It was like a black hole," she said.

    Whatever cases may have been slowed or ignored, some religious leaders said they were grateful for actions the department had taken.

    The Rev. N. J. L'Heureux, the executive director of the Queens Federation of Churches in New York, said the department had helped several Christian, Muslim and Jewish congregations deal with local governments trying to block houses of worship in neighborhoods. In Hollywood, Fla., for example, the department successfully sued the city for denying a permit to an Orthodox synagogue.

    Sometimes, Mr. L'Heureux said, an inquiry from Mr. Treene, the special religious affairs counsel, had been enough to encourage local governments to drop their resistance. The civil rights division favorably resolved 16 of 26 zoning investigations simply by expressing interest in them, according to the Justice Department.

    Kareem W. Shora, the executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said that Mr. Treene had also intervened in cases the group brought to him about Arab prison inmates having access to prayer opportunities.

    In so-called equal-access cases, the department has mostly won court rulings allowing religious organizations like the Child Evangelism Fellowship to have the same access to public school students as nonreligious groups, a principle generally approved by a divided Supreme Court in 2001.

    In the candy cane case, for example, school officials in Westfield, Mass., had suspended students for handing out candy canes with religious messages, saying it was disruptive and lurid. The students said that the "J" shape represented Jesus and the red stripes his blood, the white his purity. In a pending case from San Diego, the government defended the city's campground lease to the Boy Scouts, which had been challenged because of the group's religious tenets. The department has also challenged so-called Blaine amendments, which are state constitutional provisions enforcing separation of church and state more rigidly than does the United States Constitution. The federal government sued because the amendments could impede Mr. Bush's religion-based initiative, which provides money to religious groups for social programs.

    Reshaping the Staff

    As it has reoriented its priorities, the department has also tried to remake the cast of government lawyers who enforce civil rights. A number of career lawyers who served as section heads or deputies in the civil rights division have been replaced.

    In Congressional testimony in March, Mr. Rich said seven managers had been removed or marginalized for what he characterized as political reasons or perceived disloyalty. Department officials acknowledge the changes, but dispute the reasons.

    In addition, Mr. Ashcroft arranged for the agency's senior political appointees to take over the decades-old system used to hire recent law school graduates for entry-level career jobs that are supposed to be nonpartisan.

    Under the system, known as the honors program, nonpolitical career lawyers had screened applicants. Those selected were almost exclusively graduates of top-ranked law schools and often had had prestigious judicial clerkships or other relevant experience.

    Monica M. Goodling, a former senior aide to Mr. Gonzales, testified to a House committee last month that she had improperly used politics to hire some people as assistant federal prosecutors and for other civil service jobs, a possible violation of federal employment laws.

    But the pattern of hiring on an ideological basis was more widespread than what Ms. Goodling described, according to interviews and department statistics.

    Figures provided by the department show that from 2003 through 2006, there was a notable increase of hirings from religious-affiliated institutions like Regent University and Ave Maria University. The department hired eight from those two schools in that period, compared to 50 from Harvard and 13 from Yale.

    Several career lawyers said that some political appointees favored the religious-oriented employees, intervening to steer $1,000 to $4,000 annual merit bonuses to them.

    Ms. Oliveri and several other law professors said placement officers and faculty at their schools found that graduates seeking work at the Justice Department had a better chance by cleansing their résumés of liberal affiliations while emphasizing ties to the Federalist Society, a Washington conservative group, or membership in a religious fellowship.

    Ms. Oliveri recalled that when she was hired in 2000 by the Justice Department, she was impressed by the accomplishments of her peers. But once the political appointees controlled the hiring, she said, "The change in the quality of people who were chosen was very pronounced."

    When the front office sent around the résumés of those newly hired for the honors program, she said, "It was obvious what they had: conservative and religious bona fides."

 

---

    Go to Original

    Ex-Justice Dept. Lawyer Can't Recall His Role in Controversial Policies
    By Greg Gordon
    McClatchy Newspapers

    Wednesday 13 June 2007

    Washington - Another former Justice Department lawyer went before Congress on Wednesday with few answers for his Democratic interrogators and a spotty memory.

    Hans von Spakovsky, who's seeking a full six-year term on the Federal Election Commission, deflected questions about whether he undermined voting rights laws, saying, "I was not the decision maker in the front office of the Civil Rights Division."

    Time and again during his confirmation hearing, he cited either the attorney-client privilege or a cloudy memory for his purported role in restricting minorities' voting rights.

    Von Spakovsky couldn't remember blocking an investigation into complaints that a Minnesota Republican official was discriminating against Native American voters before the 2004 election.

    Under oath, he also said he didn't recall seeing data from the state of Georgia that would have undercut a push by senior officials within the Civil Rights Division to approve the state's tough new law requiring photo IDs of all voters. The data showed that 300,000 Georgia voters lacked driver's licenses. A federal judge later threw out the law as unconstitutional.

    Von Spakovsky was among four nominees to the bipartisan FEC, which regulates federal campaign finance laws, to appear before the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. He and two of the others have had presidential recess appointments since early last year.

    Nearly the entire two-hour hearing focused on von Spakovsky and on allegations from former career Justice Department lawyers that he was the administration's "point person for undermining the Civil Rights Division's mandate to protect voting rights" of minorities during his more than four-year tenure.

    Citing a scathing letter from six former senior officials of the Voting Rights Section, Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told him bluntly: "It is really a problem for this body to vote for someone with this letter on the record."

    Illinois Democratic Sen. and presidential candidate Barack Obama said this week that he thought that von Spakovsky should be rejected "unless he can provide legitimate explanations for his conduct." Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., expressed similar misgivings.

    Whether Democrats can derail von Spakovsky's appointment is unclear.

    Feinstein cautioned that "a very serious situation could develop if the Senate fails to confirm at least some" of the four nominees by fall because none of the current commissioners has won Senate approval for a full six-year term.

    Another problem for foes of von Spakovsky is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing a home-state candidate, recess appointee Steven Walther of Reno, Nev., and Republicans are likely to put a retaliatory hold on Walther if von Spakovsky is rejected.

    Feinstein and Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin peppered von Spakovsky with questions Wednesday about his Justice Department service.

    Asked about the Georgia ID law, von Spakovsky declined to disclose the legal advice he gave his superiors, saying it was privileged, but he maintained that the department took the correct position because the courts didn't find that the law violated the federal Voting Rights Act. In overturning the law, the federal courts cited the 14th and 24th Amendments to the Constitution, he said.

    Feinstein questioned von Spakovsky about allegations that he impeded an investigation of allegations that Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer had wrongly interpreted a new state ID law to bar 200,000 Native Americans from using tribal ID cards to vote.

    "I don't remember that complaint at all," von Spakovsky said.

    Durbin, after listening to von Spakovsky's memory lapses, remarked that it was "an affliction to which many people in the Department of Justice suffer." He referred to recent testimony by other department officials who are facing allegations of partisanship.

    Durbin asked von Spakovsky about a controversial article he wrote for a Texas law journal in 2005 under the pseudonym "Publius," expressing strong support for voter ID laws.

    Weeks after its publication, von Spakovsky reviewed the newly enacted Georgia law requiring every voter to produce a photo ID. He testified Wednesday that he'd received clearance from a department ethics officer to write the article. He also cited a 1994 legal opinion by the department that said employees had a First Amendment right to author articles.

    Von Spakovsky revealed his authorship of the article on the FEC Web site in 2006, but later deleted mention of it.

    When Durbin asked why, he replied: "I took it off because the controversy was, frankly, interfering with my work at the FEC."

    Feinstein said the committee would accept comments on von Spakovsky's confirmation until June 20, and she directed von Spakovsky to deliver a point-by-point rebuttal to the six-page letter signed by former Voting Rights Section chief Joseph Rich and five of his senior aides.

    The other nominees are Republican David Mason, who's already served a full FEC term and whom Bush nominated for a second term in 2005, and Democrat Robert Lenhard, a former general counsel of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Mason also has a recess appointment.