Remarks as Prepared for Delivery
Good afternoon and thank you for the kind introduction. I also want to thank the National Bar Association (NBA) for the invitation to speak. It is an honor to speak at a luncheon named for the venerable Junius Williams, whose leadership and civil rights advocacy have helped advance causes we all hold so dear.
The NBA has an enviable track record of leadership in civil rights. Going back to the early 20th century, NBA lawyers have taken on responsibility for protecting and defending people from rights abuses. Black lawyers tried a case in 1919 to ensure Black voters were not prevented from participating in primary elections in Texas. Black lawyers fought segregation in Louisville, Kentucky. In the 1920s, Black lawyers challenged restrictive housing covenants in Washington, D.C. Black lawyers saved from the death penalty in 1942 the wrongly convicted “Pompano Boys” in Florida.
Across the decades between now and then, NBA members have continued to make huge differences in our communities. They established free legal clinics, helped lead the pro bono movement of the civil rights era and they made Brown v. Board of Education a pivotal case in the civil rights movement. No wonder many people refer to the National Bar Association as the nation’s legal conscience.
As I stand before you, a lifelong civil rights attorney, I reflect on the role of attorneys in the movement for justice and freedom. Of course, lawyers have played a critical role in dismantling the legal structure of discrimination and in enforcing the civil and criminal anti-discrimination laws. As Dr. King told us, “It may be true that morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me.”
Twenty-twenty-four is a year of important anniversaries for the civil rights attorney: 60 years ago, Freedom Summer changed the course of American history. Earlier this month, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 turned 60. In May, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision turned 70. These anniversaries are not merely dates on our calendar. They serve as landmarks in a relay race toward justice, where the work of the past allows us to carry the baton onward today and, soon, to pass the baton beyond us.
But attorneys were at first left out of conversations about civil rights. We have not always been seen as the influencers or opinion makers we are. With the civil rights movement, that changed. It started with an open letter in an Alabama newspaper challenging Governor George Wallace’s position on integration. Bernard Segal, then president of the American Bar Association, along with 46 other lawyers, declared that Wallace could not defy the federal court’s order to desegregate the University of Alabama.
Soon after, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy invited 244 lawyers to the East Room of the White House to hear President John F. Kennedy and others speak about the need for civil rights legislation. This was part of the Kennedy administration’s effort to win hearts and minds to the cause by persuading powerful people of its urgency. Bobby Kennedy spoke as well. He argued that members of the legal profession, who had sworn an oath to the Constitution, were obligated to advance the rule of law.
This meant more than merely litigating their own cases, in their own realms. It meant using their specialized knowledge and skills to advance civil rights. Bobby Kennedy’s entreaty did not fall on deaf ears.
Lawyers and many others took to heart these additional words from Dr. King: “[T]he law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless, and this is what we often do and we have to do in society through legislation.”
I am sometimes struck by the fact that the Civil Rights Division that I now oversee did not always exist. Now in its 67th year, it is the product of the activism and organizing of the early civil rights movement, but also strategic and sound lawyering. For nearly seven decades, the Civil Rights Division has sought to protect and defend every American from harm and discrimination. While this goal is enduring, brick by brick we build justice up, even as others would dismantle it. In recent years, we have celebrated serious and important victories.
One of our highest priorities is ensuring that all eligible citizens can participate in that most fundamental element of democracy — the right to vote. Unfortunately, voter suppression efforts are still rampant across the country today, and we have taken many steps to fight these.
We have enforced voting rights laws. We continue to litigate several major cases brought in 2021 and 2022 to protect the right to vote in Texas (statewide redistricting), Georgia (state legislation on voting procedures) and Arizona (state legislation on voting procedures). In May, we won an injunction in Mi Familia Vota v. Fontes against an effort to require documentation of place of birth by people registering to vote in presidential elections.
We have defended the private rights to challenge practices under the Voting Rights Act (VRA) and other voting rights laws in district courts in Alabama (2), North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Kansas, Florida, Colorado and Texas.
We have defended the constitutionality of Section 2 of the VRA through intervention, including voter intimidation protections in Fair Fight v. True the Vote, which is pending, supporting the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act in several pending cases challenging Georgia’s statewide redistricting plans and challenging the 2022 Louisiana House and Senate redistricting plans in Nairne v. Ardoin, which is pending, to defend the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act.
Hate crimes continue to plague the most vulnerable members of our communities, stirred by renewed forces of racism and xenophobia. These offenses are intolerable, and the Civil Rights Division is committed to vigorously prosecuting the perpetrators. We have charged more than 120 defendants with hate crimes in over 110 cases since January 2021. This includes the three white men who killed Ahmaud Arbery just because he was Black, and the person who killed five and wounded 19 at Club Q in Colorado Springs, a haven for the LGBTQI+ community. Our work in this area can never undo the damage to victims or their families, but our swift and determined response can send a loud and clear message that no one should have to live in fear for because of how they look, where they are from, who they love or how they worship.
Every American has a right to policing that keeps them safe while protecting their constitutional rights. Most law enforcement officers fulfill this obligation faithfully, doing a hard job well, with often-unheralded acts of heroism. But when some officers engage in misconduct, it undermines the public trust essential to effective policing and deprives community members of fundamental rights. We have responded decisively to such misconduct.
We have charged, convicted and put behind bars the officer responsible for tragically murdering George Floyd, and the three officers who stood by idly while he did so. We charged the Louisville officers whose misconduct resulted in the tragic death of Breonna Taylor, and the five Memphis police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death. And six law enforcement officers in Rankin County, Mississippi, who described themselves as the “goon squad,” received sentences ranging from 10 to 40 years for bursting into the home of two Black Mississippi men without probable cause, abusing them, calling them racial epithets and torturing them.
The Civil Rights Division has also addressed systemic, structural injustices that run deep in this country. Banks and credit unions continue to deny loans to borrowers of color. Cities and towns continue to block affordable housing in their zeal to keep neighborhoods white. But in 2021, the Justice Department announced the Combating Redlining Initiative, under which we have achieved 12 redlining resolutions and secured significant restitution for communities of color: $122 million.
We protect children of color, children with disabilities and children with limited English proficiency who face bigotry and endure unfair treatment in their schools. As one example of many, two weeks ago we secured an agreement with Wichita Public Schools, Kansas’s largest school district. The district had a pattern of disproportionately disciplining children of color and children with disabilities, including referring them to the police. Our agreement ensures Wichita will be accountable for implementing the following: to stop this discrimination, end the use of seclusion, reform its restraint practices and improve services.
I could share dozens of additional examples of how we protect every American from unfair treatment: From Uber riders with disabilities being overcharged to people with mental health disabilities being unnecessarily institutionalized. From minors coerced into engaging in commercial sex to Black people exposed to risk of illness and other serious harm because of racially discriminatory and inadequate access to safe and effective sewage management.
I believe Bobby Kennedy’s 1963 call to action remains relevant today. And I see you, continuing to heed the call. You are putting your skills and expertise toward making sure our legal system and all our laws manifest our nation’s ideals. For some of us, this is through our core job. For others it is through pro bono representations or volunteer work. Without a doubt, you shoulder a tangible burden. As these last years have shined a light on injustices that persist even decades after the sweeping reforms wrought by the civil rights movement, the members of the NBA are standing up and stepping forward. You are making a difference.
As the late Congressman John Lewis reminded us, “Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”
We are all, in this room, powerful people. We are influencers. We are opinion makers. We are judges, attorneys, policymakers, advocates and citizens with an urgent drive to protect our democracy and to ensure equal justice under law. If we approach these challenges with courage and conviction, with fidelity to the Constitution and with empathy for those who are suffering, I have no doubt that we can move this nation closer to the ideal of equal justice that your forbears in the NBA worked so valiantly to achieve.
Thank you for having me today.
