Donald Trump's Pick to Enforce Civil Rights Is a Civil Rights Disaster
Just before he became president, a report came out indicating how Donald Trump’s Justice Department would be treating Civil Rights. The Hill on Thursday offered a sneak peek of the blueprint for Trump’s DOJ, one major upshot being a reduction in funding for its civil rights division.
If it was already clear before the inauguration that Trump and Attorney General nominee Jeff Sessions are likely to short shrift the issue, on Friday it became more so.
It was reported on Friday that John M. Gore, an attorney at the Jones Day firm, would be leading the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division as the deputy assistant attorney general for civil rights. This is indicative for a number of reasons of the disregard with which Trump's administration will treat civil rights enforcement.
First and foremost, as Deputy Director for the Center for American Progress Action Fund Igor Volsky noted, Gore was one of the defense attorneys who argued in court on behalf of North Carolina's discriminatory and economically disastrous anti-transgender bill HB2. The bill blocks transgender people from using public bathrooms that align with their gender identity. (Gore pulled out of the case last week and this appears to explain why.) As Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern has written, the bill has received mixed reviews in federal court. Gore was helping the state defend it against allegations that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and federal law. Basically, he was on the side of discrimination in the country’s most high-profile LGBTQ rights case of the past year.
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http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/01/20/donald_trump_s_pick_to_enforce_civil_rights_is_a_civil_rights_disaster.html
