Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Leahy, and distinguished members of the Committee, it is a pleasure to appear before you
I have served as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division for almost exactly one year now. I am honored to serve President Bush, Attorney General Gonzales, and the professionals of the Civil Rights Division in this capacity.
I am pleased to report that the past year was full of outstanding accomplishments in the Civil Rights Division, one in which we obtained many record levels of enforcement. I am proud of the professional attorneys and staff in the Division whose talents, dedication and hard work made these accomplishments possible. My prepared written statement details the accomplishments of each Section of the Division, and I will only address portions of it here. Mr. Chairman, I would ask that the entirety of my prepared statement be placed into the record.
I will take just a brief opportunity to highlight some of the Division’s more notable accomplishments during the past year:
- The Voting Section has filed 17 new lawsuits this year, more than doubling the average number of lawsuits filed during the preceding 30 years;
- Just last week, we successfully mounted the largest election monitoring effort ever conducted by the Department of Justice for a mid-term election;
- Earlier this year, the Administration strongly supported passage of the Voting Rights Reauthorization legislation;
- Last year, we obtained a record number of convictions in the prosecution of human trafficking crimes, deplorable offenses of fear, force and violence that disproportionately affect women and minority immigrants;
- Last year, the Employment Litigation Section filed as many lawsuits challenging a pattern or practice of discrimination as during the last three years of the previous Administration combined;
- Last year, the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section filed more cases alleging sexual harassment than in any year in its history;
- Last year, pursuant to the Attorney General’s Operation Home Sweet Home initiative, the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section conducted significantly more tests to ensure compliance with the Fair Housing Act, and we are working to achieve an all-time number of such tests this year;
- Last year, the Disability Rights Section has obtained the highest success rate to date in mediating complaints brought under the Americans with Disabilities Act (80 percent).
- In the past six years, the Disability Rights Section has reached more than 80 percent of the agreements obtained with state and local governments under Project Civic Access, a program that has made cities more accessible and made lives better for more than three million Americans with disabilities;
- In the past six years, we have ensured the integrity of law enforcement by more than tripling the number of agreements reached with police departments, and convicting 50 percent more law enforcement officials for willful misconduct, such as the use of excessive force, as compared to the previous six years;
Before I close, I would like to note that the Division will celebrate its 50th Anniversary next year. As this milestone draws nears, I have reflected upon the work of the Division not only during my own time of service, but over the past half-century. Since our inception in 1957, the Division has accomplished a great deal and we have much to be proud of. While citizens of all colors, from every background, living in all pockets of the country – north and south, rural and urban – have seen gains made on the civil rights front, one need not look back very far to recall a very different landscape.
This point was made more vivid for me when I traveled with Attorney General Gonzales to Birmingham, Alabama, earlier this year. We attended the dedication of the 16th Street Baptist Church as a National Historic Landmark. In 1963, racists threw a bomb in this historically black church, killing four little girls who were attending Sunday School. Horrific incidents like this sparked the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – the most comprehensive piece of civil rights legislation passed by Congress since Reconstruction. While much has been achieved under that piece of legislation and other civil rights laws, the Division’s daily work demonstrates that discrimination still exists. Our work continues.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Leahy, for the opportunity to appear before you today. I look forward to your questions.
