WASHINGTON -- Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division was rebuilt into what former Attorney General Eric Holder called the agency's "crown jewel."
But many civil-rights advocates and legal scholars aired concerns Friday that the unit faces an uncertain future under the leadership of President-elect Donald Trump and his pick to be the next attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala.
They predict the Justice Department in the coming years will be less likely to sue states over voting restrictions that target the poor or minorities, to hold police departments accountable for abuses or fight in court for the rights of transgender people.
Also vulnerable are Justice Department guidelines set under Obama that sought more lenient sentences for nonviolent offenders and restricted racial profiling and surveillance of Muslims.
Among the biggest objections to Sessions, civil-rights groups say, is that he has voted against expanding rights for gays and lesbians, spoken dismissively of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 over racially insensitive remarks he made. Now that same staunch conservative may be in charge of federal civil-rights enforcement.
Advocates say a retreat from the Justice Department's aggressive posture on civil and voting rights would come at a bad time. The country is grappling with the aftermath of widespread unrest and frustration sparked by the killings of unarmed black men by police officers in cities and towns across the nation.
In recent years, minorities have increasingly turned to the Justice Department, an agency of more than 100,000 employees and a $27.8 billion budget, to address discrimination by police and state and local governments.
Sessions "must be committed to equal justice under law for all," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "His record is one that demonstrates deep opposition to our nation's civil-rights law ... At a time when our country is gripped by a spike in hate crimes, we need an attorney general who will not fan the flames of hate."
Because Trump has released few policy papers or proposals dealing with criminal justice matters, civil-rights advocates and former Justice Department officials have been left to guess about his positions through his tweets, campaign speeches and three debate performances.
Sessions' positions, on the other hand, are better known. He voted for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and against expanding hate crimes to include sexual orientation. He opposed an update to the Voting Rights Act after a 2013 Supreme Court ruling struck down key elements of the historic law. He has been critical of bipartisan efforts to overhaul sentencing in drug cases.
The senator also has been somewhat supportive of one of Trump's most contentious proposals -- banning Muslims from entering the United States. Sessions has said that Trump has sparked an "appropriate" discussion by proposing the ban, though he acknowledged that such a proposal would be "treading on dangerous ground."
"At the same time, we're in an age that's very dangerous, and we're seeing more and more persons enter and a lot of them have done terrorist acts," he told Breitbart News in December of last year.
In addition to his policy positions, civil-rights groups are deeply concerned about his past. In 1986, when he was tapped by President Ronald Reagan to become a federal judge at age 39, Sessions' nomination was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee after it emerged that he had made racially charged remarks.
Justice Department lawyers and colleagues at the time said Sessions had once agreed that a white lawyer was a "disgrace" to his race for handling civil-rights cases, referred to a black attorney as "boy," and called the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and American Civil Liberties Union "un-American."
Sessions denied having made those statements or said he did not recall them.
Republicans and conservatives cheered Sessions' appointment, saying they are enthusiastic about what they see as a reversal of Obama administration policies in the civil-rights arena that they believe went too far, particularly in the investigations of police departments, lawsuits against states over voter ID laws and the refusal to defend a federal law prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriages.
"He will restore honor to a department that, under President Obama, perpetually pushed a political agenda while neglecting to enforce the law," said Sen. John Cornyn, a top Republican in the Senate. "It's time to end the politicization of the Justice Department and start defending the rule of law."
Information for this article was contributed by Seema Mehta of the Tribune News Service.
A Section on 11/19/2016