Attorney General Jeff Sessions: A Threat to Equal Justice for All
by Kate Walz
The next Attorney General of the United States will have broad influence over whether each of us enjoy the benefits, opportunities, and protections afforded by the laws of the United States.
The Attorney General heads the Department of Justice (DOJ), which not only prosecutes individuals charged with crimes but also represents the United States in state and federal court. The DOJ has responsibility for carrying out a wide range of programs and initiatives aimed at improving public safety, preventing crime, protecting civil rights and assuring that justice is efficient and even-handed. As Thomas Jefferson wrote (and DOJ embraces in its mission):
“The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.”
Under President Obama, Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch took decisive action to promote justice and equality for all and to eradicate many forms of prejudice and discrimination. Through their leadership, sentencing reform and other criminal justice reforms gave millions of justice-involved individuals a chance to return home and contribute to their communities. Holder and Lynch also led a long overdue push within the federal government for reforms to ensure police accountability to all communities, particularly communities of color.
At the same time, under Holder and Lynch’s tenure, the DOJ used civil rights laws to advance equal opportunity in employment, to take on banks and lending institutions engaged in lending discrimination, to support the rights of persons with disabilities to remain in their communities rather than to be institutionalized, and to defend key provisions of the Fair Housing Act.
Attorneys General Holder and Lynch used the office not to to make splashy headlines, but to make a difference in the everyday lives of all Americans.
President-elect Trump has nominated Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be the next Attorney General. Senator Sessions’s long tenure in public life provides a strong record on which to judge his ability to serve in this vital role.
Jeff Sessions’s record is replete with evidence of his disdain for the mission of the Justice Department and for many of the laws it is charged with enforcing.
Sessions’s own words reflect a deep prejudice against people of color, immigrants, women, the LGBT community, and persons with disabilities. Notable examples include sworn testimony from subordinates that Sessions called a black lawyer “boy” and warned him to “be careful how you talk to white folks,” and a 2013 statement that “almost no one” immigrating to the United States from the Dominican Republic had “skills that would benefit us and would indicate their likely success in our society.”
Sessions was one of the first senators to publicly support building a wall between the United States and Mexico, and he is a long-standing proponent of increased deportation in scale and aggression. Sessions voted to oppose the 2013 reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, the key federal law that funds anti-violence programs in this country and provides a federal template to protect survivors. Sessions has opposed marriage equality as well as legislation to protect the LGBT community from hate crimes and discrimination in the workplace and the military. He also opposes any efforts to reduce mass incarceration, which teeters now at over 2.3 million people and disproportionately harms communities of color, promoting instead a return to a focus on harsh mandatory minimum sentences.
As attorney general of Alabama in the 1990s, in a not so subtle attempt to sidestep Brown v. Board of Education, Sessions fought against the will of the state school board that he was representing to continue massive inequalities in public school funding. Sessions is also a long-standing opponent to the rights of persons with disabilities to remain in their communities rather than to be institutionalized.
In short, Senator Sessions’s record demonstrates his bias and disregard for justice and equality for all.
Even if Sessions’s 42-year public record were not enough to disqualify him, the Senate must question if he is capable of carrying out the duties of the office. The Attorney General must be capable of upholding the United States Constitution and enforcing the laws of the United States without interference from anyone, even the President. Nominee Sessions’s early and enthusiastic support for President-Elect Trump, who has repeatedly stated positions that conflict with Constitutional and statutory law, indicates that he will not advise President Trump about his obligations under the law and the limits of his powers.
Congress should not confirm Senator Sessions.
Margaret Stapleton contributed to this blog post.
This is the second blog in a four-part series examining key federal appointees by the incoming administration. Read our statement on the threat that these appointees pose to poverty-fighting programs.
