Executive Session

EXECUTIVE SESSION

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

NOMINATION OF WAN J. KIM

Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights is the face of civil rights law enforcement in America. I will support Wan Kim's nomination for this important post.

For nearly 50 years, the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has enforced Nation's civil rights laws and combated racism, discrimination, and other civil rights abuses. And during the past 50 years, our Nation has made important strides in the fight for civil rights. The recent death of Rosa Parks is a reminder of how far we have come, and of the courageous acts it took to get here.

I am concerned, however, about the Bush Administration's commitment to civil rights law enforcement and especially voting rights. As Chief Justice Roberts testified at his confirmation hearing, the right to vote is the ``preservative'' right of all other rights. Without that fundamental right, citizens are voiceless and powerless.

At his nomination hearing, I asked Wan Kim about the Civil Rights Division's August 26 preclearance of a voter identification law in the state of Georgia that is discriminatory and ``a national disgrace,'' in the words of the New York Times. The law requires people without a driver's license--a group disproportionately consisting of the poor, the elderly, and minorities to pay $20 or more for a State ID card in order to vote. There isn't a single place in the entire city of Atlanta where the cards are sold. The Georgia law aims to be an anti-fraud measure, but the Secretary of State in Georgia maintains there has not been a proven case of voter fraud in that state in nearly a decade.

Although Mr. Kim has been the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division for over 2 years, he said he has not supervised voting rights issues and does not have an opinion about whether the Georgia law should have been precleared. That's a fair answer.

But I hope Mr. Kim reads a decision handed down just a few days after his nomination hearing by a Federal judge in Georgia, who enjoined the law and ruled that it appeared to be unconstitutional. The judge wrote that the Georgia law ``constitutes a poll tax.'' Just last week, this ruling was affirmed by a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. Two of the three judges on the panel were appointed by President George H.W. Bush.

I am also concerned that the Bush administration has not brought a single voting rights lawsuit alleging racial discrimination against African Americans. Perhaps even more troubling is the fact that earlier this year the Justice Department filed its first case ever under the Voting Rights Act alleging discrimination in voting against white voters. This case was brought against a county in Mississippi, a State with a long and ugly history of discrimination against African Americans in voting.

As Congress begins to consider reauthorization of the important Voting Rights Act, I urge Mr. Kim to take a hard look at the work of the Civil Rights Division's Voting Section and those who supervise it. The Voting Section has done an effective job enforcing voting rights on behalf of language minorities, but not, in the opinion of many, on behalf of racial minorities.

Another area of concern is the productivity and management of the Civil Rights Division's Appellate Section. This section has been spending more time lately deporting illegal immigrants than enforcing civil rights. According to data provided by Mr. Kim, 62 percent of the briefs filed by the Civil Rights Division's Appellate Section in FY 2005 involved defending the government's decision to deport illegal immigrants. Nearly 40 percent of attorney hours in the Civil Rights Division's Appellate Section were devoted to this work, according to Mr. Kim. These numbers are troubling and unacceptable.

I am also concerned about the overall decline in civil rights appellate enforcement by the Civil Rights Division. According to Mr. Kim, during the first 5 years of the Bush administration, the Justice Department filed an annual average of 80 civil rights appellate briefs. By contrast, during the last 5 years of the Clinton administration, the Justice Department filed an annual average of 122 civil rights appellate briefs. In other words, there has been a 34 percent decline in civil rights appellate filings from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration. And there was a 73 percent drop in civil rights appellate amicus filings between 1999 and 2004. These are disturbing trends and I urge Mr. Kim to address them.

The Bush administration has also created a serious morale problem within the career ranks of the Civil Rights Division. Several media reports have elaborated on this problem, most recently a September 2005 Legal Affairs article entitled ``An Uncivil Division'' by a former high-ranking career official in the Civil Rights Division, William Yeomans. His article indicates that morale problems have largely been caused by heavy-handed tactics used by Civil Rights Division political appointees in making personnel decisions, communicating with career attorneys, and setting civil rights enforcement priorities.

During the nomination hearing of Alberto Gonzales to be Attorney General earlier this year, Senator DEWINE asked Mr. Gonzales what he would want to be remembered for as Attorney General. Mr. Gonzales said he wanted to be remembered first for fighting the war on terror, and second for protecting civil rights and voting rights.

I hope Attorney General Gonzales will do a better job of fulfilling his pledge to protect the civil rights and voting rights of all Americans, and I urge Wan Kim to play a leading role in accomplishing this mission.

http://thomas.loc.gov/