Trump could reshape Justice Department’s civil rights focus
WASHINGTON — A Donald Trump administration could radically reshape the Justice Department, particularly civil rights efforts that became one of its most pressing and high-profile priorities over the past eight years.
The department, under the Obama administration and the country’s first two black attorneys general, has investigated about two dozen police agencies for civil rights violations and reached court-enforceable consent decrees with many of them. It refused to defend a federal law that banned the recognition of gay marriage. It sued North Carolina over a bathroom bill that it said discriminated against transgender people. And it implemented new profiling limits on federal law-enforcement agencies.
But Trump’s election has stirred concern from civil rights advocates that some of that work could be undone, set aside or at least minimized under a Trump administration.
“The Civil Rights Division was just building a head of steam over the last two, three years, and it raises really serious concerns about whether we now lose traction on these issues,” Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said of a section that former Attorney General Eric Holder called the “crown jewel” of the department.