Republicans Accuse Labor Nominee Of Fighting For Civil Rights
What Republicans Say Perez Did That Was Bad
The main charge against Perez (other than being brown) is that as part of his duties in the Civil Rights Division he brokered a deal in a housing discrimination case in St. Paul, to keep the case from reaching the Supreme Court. The St. Paul case would have enabled the Supreme Court to strike down “disparate-impact theory” in civil rights a labor law, with a 5-4 vote.
The current Roberts movement-conservative majority on the Supreme Court looks for cases that enable them to maneuver 5-4 votes to strike down laws that protect citizens from billionaires and corporations (who fund the conservative movement) in various ways. Citizens United is the best example of this, it undid campaign finance laws, enabling billionaires and giant corporations to put multiple millions into getting their candidates elected at every level. The case involving Perez is one that this court could have used to further harm citizen interests with a 5-4 vote.
The Case
In the early 2000s a group of landlords were renting substandard (heat didn’t work, no locks, rotten floors, rat holes, bugs, broken pipes, etc.) housing to minorities in St. Paul. St Paul cracked down with code enforcement. The landlords sued St. Paul, claiming code enforcement would violate the Fair Housing Act because minority tenants would have less access to … nasty, substandard housing with rotted floors, rats etc.
That’s right, the slumlords sued the city arguing that if the city did code enforcement and it put them out of business minorities wouldn’t have access to nasty, substandard housing that was infested with code violations. They claimed that code enforcement violated civil right laws by potentially decreasing minority access to nasty, substandard housing.
http://blog.ourfuture.org/20130416/republicans-accuse-labor-nominee-of-fighting-for-civil-rights
= new reply since forum marked as read
