In Shift, Justice Department is Hiring Lawyers With Civil Rights Backgrounds

In Shift, Justice Department is Hiring Lawyers With Civil Rights Backgrounds

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division has reversed a pattern of systematically hiring conservative lawyers with little experience in civil rights, the practice that caused a scandal over politicization during the Bush administration.

Instead, newly disclosed documents show, the lawyers hired over the past two years at the division have been far more likely to have civil rights backgrounds — and to have ties to traditional civil rights organizations with liberal reputations, like the American Civil Liberties Union or the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.


<...>

But Joseph Rich, a former voting rights section chief who left during the Bush administration, argued that hiring people to enforce civil rights laws by looking for previous experience working on civil rights matters was not the same thing as looking for a particular political ideology.

“You’re not hiring people because they are liberal,” Mr. Rich said. “You’re hiring them because they have terrific experience in civil rights, and that’s what you need.”

more

In the last two years of the Bush administration, the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division was engulfed by allegations that political appointees had illegally and inappropriately hired career attorneys because they were conservatives or Republicans, culminating with a blistering report from DOJ's Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility savaging the activity as a "violat(ion) of federal law." Ever since, the right-wing media has been desperately trying to prove that the Obama DOJ is just as unethically partisan as was the Bush DOJ.

In the latest salvo, the conservative Pajamas Media -- media home of New Black Panther Party fabulist J. Christian Adams, who was hired during the period of illegal hiring -- has published the first of what it promises will be many attacks on the division's hiring, based on a Freedom of Information Act request for the resumes of new hires.

According to Pajamas Media, the resumes "reveal a rogue's gallery of militant civil rights lawyers" with "so many aggressive attorneys who previously worked at the ACLU, NAACP, Legal Aid, or at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights that it is a wonder these organizations have anyone left on their staffs."

In other words, Pajamas Media is angry that the Civil Rights Division has hired so many attorneys who actually have experience and interest in civil rights law. This argument makes about as much sense as complaining that the DOJ's Tax Division is hiring too many tax lawyers; these are specialized areas of law, so prior experience is crucial.

<...>