Kristen Clarke via Twitter. (Photo Credit: Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law)
WASHINGTON | Kristen Clarke, the president & executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a national civil rights organization based in Washington D.C., was confirmed by the Senate Tuesday to serve as the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Clarke was nominated to the post in January 2021, by President Joe Biden.
Clarke was confirmed as the first woman and woman of color to formally serve in the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department since its establishment in 1957.
The first-generation American daughter of immigrant parents from Jamaica, West Indies, Clarke’s confirmation in the 51-48 Senate vote with Maine Senator Susan Collins as the only Republican voting for her, came after a contentious Senate Judiciary hearing in which Senate Republicans questioned her record and how aggressively she would seek to enforce civil rights laws and investigate law enforcement agencies. Republican Senators questioned her views on police reform with Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Senate Minority Leader, Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell refusing to back her confirmation.
“I do not support defunding the police,” she said in the hearing, in response to a question from Illinois Democratic Senator Dick Durbin. “I do support finding strategies to ensure that law enforcement can carry out their jobs more safely and effectively and channeling resources to emotional health treatment and other severely under-resourced areas.”
In a statement to CNN, Sen. Cruz said; “Kristen Clarke’s brazen disdain for law enforcement — evidenced by her repeated calls to defund the police and her troubling history of advocacy on behalf of brutal cop killers — should be disqualifying to serve as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division.”
For the past five years Clarke has headed the Lawyers’ Committee. Prior to joining LDF, she worked at the U.S. Department of Justice in the Civil Rights Division. While at the Justice Department, she served as a federal prosecutor in the Criminal Section of the Division, handling police misconduct, police brutality, hate crimes, and human trafficking cases. She also worked on voting rights and redistricting cases through the Division’s Voting Section.
Clarke’s confirmation comes on a day when President Joe Biden met with the family of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man murdered by a year ago by a Minneapolis police officer who has been convicted in Floyd’s death.
In his remarks in the Oval Office at the White House, the President noted, “His [Floyd’s] murder launched a summer of protest we hadn’t seen since the Civil Rights era in the ‘60s – protests that peacefully unified people of every race and generation to collectively say enough of the senseless killings.
Last month’s conviction of the police officer who murdered George was another important step forward toward justice. But our progress can’t stop there.
To deliver real change, we must have accountability when law enforcement officers violate their oaths, and we need to build lasting trust between the vast majority of the men and women who wear the badge honorably and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. We can and must have both accountability and trust and in our justice system.”
In response to the confirmation of Clarke, Lambda Legal Chief Strategy Officer and Legal Director Sharon McGowan noted in an emailed statement;
“We celebrate the Senate’s confirmation of Kristen Clarke to lead the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. Ms. Clarke’s long and unswerving commitment to advancing civil and human rights, as well as her own history with the Division, made her eminently qualified for this critical role within the Justice Department. Her confirmation as the first Black woman to lead the Civil Rights Division is welcome and long overdue.
As we mark the first anniversary of the murder of George Floyd, we must continue to speak out about the fact that police violence continues to impact Black and other communities of color of which LGBTQ people are apart, and that the struggles for LGBTQ justice and racial justice are deeply intertwined. As a civil rights movement that traces our modern LGBTQ history to protests against police violence, we know how important it will be to have leaders in the DOJ committed to police accountability as part of a broader understanding of what LGBTQ equality looks like.
Ms. Clarke has demonstrated her deep understanding of LGBTQ issues over the years, and Lambda Legal looks forward to working with her in her new role to promote equality and advance justice for the communities that we serve.”
