Black activists have been pushing for a Black attorney general, so hopes for justice system reform were somewhat dashed when President-elect Joe Biden picked pro-police Merrick Garland as the next attorney general.
Biden announced on Thursday, Jan. 7 his nomination of Garland, a former judge with whom Biden is very familiar. Garland was nominated by President Barack Obama in 2016 to fill a Supreme Court opening after Justice Antonin Scalia died. Republicans blocked the nomination.
A native of the Chicago area, Garland practiced corporate litigation at Arnold & Porter and worked as a federal prosecutor in the Department of Justice. President Bill Clinton appointed Garland to the appeals court in 1997, and he served as its chief judge from 2013 to February 2020.
Garland was considered a long shot for attorney general, due in part to being considered politically moderate. And his rulings tend to be pro-police.
“In close cases involving criminal law, he has been significantly more likely to side with the police and prosecutors over people accused of crimes than other Democratic appointees,” The New York Times reported.
In 2016, when Garland was being considered for the Supreme Court, the New York Times looked at 14 criminal cases in which Judge Garland voted differently from at least one fellow judge. Turns out he judged in favor of law enforcement 10 times.
Garland has strong Republican support, The New York Times reported. To that end, Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he would support a Garland nomination for attorney general. Three other Republican senators — Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Mike Lee of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine — pushed for Garland to head the F.B.I.
Garland, however, has at times disappointed liberals with his rulings. This worries Black community activists as Garland will have to make decisions about civil rights issues.
Black and Latino advocates urged Biden to tap a Black attorney general or someone with a background in civil rights causes and criminal justice reform.
Although civil rights groups such as the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund in the past championed Garland’s Supreme Court nomination, the extent of support from these groups for the attorney general job is not clear, KCBD reported.
For some, Biden’s choice of Garland feels like a contradiction of his recent promise to address police reform and civil rights concerns. Several civil rights groups and leaders including the Rev. Al Sharpton met with Biden in December and asked him to fill the attorney general job and other top-tier cabinet positions with diverse appointees.
Some on Twitter expressed disappointment at the selection of Garland.
“From a Black person, this looks like a shit show. We get you voted in, and then give us your ass to kiss. Whitewashed picks from a white male who again used Black peoples,” one person tweeted.
Another wrote, seemingly sarcastic, “These choices appear to me to be uniformly excellent. A strong retort to the argument that the Biden – Garland DOJ won’t put voting rights and civil rights at the very top of the agenda — won’t be aggressive on that…or that it won’t take cyber-security seriously enough.”
The president-elect is expected to pick civil rights lawyer Kristen Clarke as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, NPR reported.
Clarke recently announced that she had filed a lawsuit against the Proud Boys on behalf of Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan AME church, following a racist attack on the church on Jan. 2.
“This attack was one of several levied against churches targeted for their support of the Black Lives Matter movement. The Proud Boys are NOT above the law,” Clarke tweeted.
The suit seeks to hold accountable those responsible for vandalizing and terrorizing a historic Black church because of its support for racial justice, Clarke said. “This attack is a new chapter in a long and despicable history of mob violence targeting Black houses of worship.”
Clarke is the president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a civil rights organization founded in 1963 to secure equal justice for all through the rule of law and the leadership of the private bar. A former prosecutor with the Department of Justice, Clarke has expressed support for defunding the police.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
“I advocate for defunding policing operations that have made African Americans more vulnerable to police violence and contributed to mass incarceration while investing more in programs and policies that address critical community needs,” she wrote in an op-ed for Newsweek in 2020.
According to Clarke, “defunding the police” should not mean simply removing funds from police precincts, Fox News reported. It should include diverting funds to social programs that will prevent police from having to tackle certain issues, such as policing schools, she said.
“We need to defund the mass deployment of cops inside our nation’s schools,” Clarke tweeted over the summer as protests continued across the country following the death of George Floyd.
