Federal Government Policy and Business

Opinion | What happens now to Justice Dept.’s civil rights enforcement?

The Washington Post: Vanita Gupta came to national prominence by leading a successful NAACP Legal Defense Fund fight on behalf of 38 people who had been railroaded on drug charges in Tulia, Tex.

She took that same passion to the Justice Department, when she was chosen to lead its civil rights division in 2014. Now, with the end of President Obama’s tenure, she has moved on and soon the agency will be in much different hands.

The civil rights division, central to voting rights, policing and other critical issues, will fall under the leadership of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), if he is confirmed by the Senate. He was nominated to be attorney general by Donald Trump, a man nominated to be president by a Republican convention where less than 1 percent of the delegates was African American and rejected overwhelmingly by black and brown voters. Their reputations generate wide distrust among people of color, leaving for many a worrisome question mark over the future of the division that has fought hard to make justice a reality.

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