Thank you, Ted [Shaw], for that warm introduction, but more for your leadership, mentorship, support, and friendship most of all. You are anchoring civil rights here at UNC. I also want to thank Dean Brinkley, Associate Dean Podger Smith, UNC School of Law, and the UNC Community for inviting me here today and organizing this event. I am delighted to have the chance to speak with you all today, and Mary-Rose [Papandrea], I look forward to our conversation.
I am honored to be here at UNC to celebrate Constitution Day – a fitting time to discuss how we can honor civil rights and commit to equal justice under the law every day. Equal Justice is not a self-executing proposition – it takes work of all of us to make it real.
The preamble to the Constitution expressly states that its purpose is to establish justice. And it is the responsibility of all of us as members of the legal community to bring that ideal to life – to turn the values we profess into real protections for real people in real communities. And it’s not easy. As law students, now is the time for you to start thinking about how you will fulfill that responsibility.
I join you on behalf of the Department of Justice, the only federal government agency whose name is a value. At its founding, following the Civil War, the department’s priority was to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments and to protect Black Americans seeking to exercise their right to vote from the violence of the Ku Klux Klan. Today, the department’s commitment to protecting civil rights and ensuring equal justice for all remains unchanged. And that still very much includes the right to vote, which is so foundational to our democracy. We are litigating across the country right now to protect the right to vote. We sued Texas, challenging redistricting plans that deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to participate in the voting process and elect representatives of their choice. We also challenged a Texas law that impairs the rights of Black and Latino voters to vote absentee and, when they vote in person, to receive help in the voting booth. And we sued to stop a law in Arizona that imposes numerous unlawful restrictions on voter registration. These are a handful of examples of the critical work we are doing to protect the constitutionally guaranteed voting rights of Americans across the country, rights that are quite under peril at this time.
As the Attorney General has made clear, while the Civil Rights Division is tasked with enforcing civil rights laws, it is the responsibility of the entire department to protect civil rights. To take a few examples:
- We are using all of the department’s tools to fight hate crimes – including prosecutions, victim-centered services, community mediation and reconciliation programs, and grants to support community-based responses to hate – to ensure people can live free from exploitation and violence regardless of their race, religion, disability, how they identify, or who they love.
- As law students, antitrust may seem like a hyper-technical area of law. But at its core, antitrust is about economic justice. Our Antitrust Division is fighting every day for principles like fair competition and preventing the abuse of market power to make sure we have an economy that works for everyone, to help ensure people get higher quality products, earn fair wages, and pay fair prices for essentials like health insurance, airline tickets, and food for their families.
- And we have re-established under this Attorney General the department’s Office for Access to Justice, which is working to stop unlawful evictions, expand resources for reentry for those returning home from incarceration, increase language access, and combat the criminalization of poverty.
There is more to say about these efforts and others, and I hope to address them with you during the fireside chat.
For now, I want to focus on three areas where we are working across the department to protect and advance civil rights: our work in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision; our renewed commitment to environmental justice; and our efforts to advance constitutional policing and build police-community trust.
It has been almost three months since the Supreme Court took away the Constitutional right to abortion. Dobbs dealt a devastating blow, preventing women from making important decisions about our bodies, our health, and our lives. That decision, and state actions that follow, are having a disproportionate impact on people of color, people with limited financial means, and other vulnerable populations.
That’s why we are taking action. I chair the Justice Department’s newly established Reproductive Rights Task Force, which is coordinating efforts across the department including by challenging states in court that attempt to contravene federal laws protecting reproductive healthcare access. Last month, we sued Idaho for its near-total ban on abortion, arguing that its law violates the requirement under federal law that medical professionals provide necessary stabilizing medical treatment for emergency medical conditions. We won a preliminary injunction, ensuring right now that women can access the emergency treatment and services they need.
We are working outside the courtroom, too. We are expanding access to justice in states that have criminalized patients, providers and third parties seeking to provide reproductive healthcare access. We are preparing trainings, including on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits anyone from obstructing access to reproductive health services through violence, threats of violence, or property damage. We are providing technical assistance to Congress in connection with draft legislation. In short, we are trying to do everything we can with the levers that we have to ensure access to reproductive services.
Another area where we are working across the department is environmental justice. Although violations of our environmental laws can occur anywhere, our indigenous communities, communities of color, and low-income communities often endure the greatest harm. It is an honor to be here in in North Carolina during the 40th anniversary of the Warren County protests, which many consider to be the beginning of the environmental justice movement. In 1982, when the state of North Carolina dumped truckloads of toxic chemicals in a small, predominantly Black and low-income neighborhood, its residents stood up — they marched and protested. And while they did not win the ultimate battle against the landfill, their actions shed light on environmental justice issues across the country, and started the movement we are proud to be part of today.
This past spring, I announced the department’s Comprehensive Environmental Justice Enforcement Strategy, which will ensure that components across the Justice Department, including all 94 of our U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, are identifying and addressing environmental justice concerns. The Attorney General also created our first-ever Office of Environmental Justice to serve as the central hub for these efforts, prioritizing meaningful engagement with the communities most affected by environmental injustice. We opened one such investigation in Houston, in which we will examine whether the city responds to requests for municipal services, including complaints about illegal dumping, in a manner that discriminates against Black and Latino Houston residents, in violation of federal civil rights laws.
Finally, I want to highlight the department’s commitment to constitutional policing. We charged four current and former Louisville Metro Police Department officers with federal crimes related to Breonna Taylor’s tragic death. One of the former officers has pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit two federal crimes. The department also secured a conviction against the officer who murdered George Floyd and the three officers that stood by and failed to intervene — all of whom violated Mr. Floyd’s constitutional rights. Those convictions are important in and of themselves, but the convictions for failing to intervene or render medical aid also impact training on such issues in police departments nationwide.
Criminal prosecutions alone, however, do not remedy systemic issues communities are facing across the country. The department also uses pattern or practice investigations, which can lead to consent decrees and long-term change. But in a nation of 18,000 police departments, we cannot enforce our way to constitutional policing. That is why we must use a variety of tools.
Through our relaunched Collaborative Reform Initiative, the department provides three levels of highly tailored technical assistance to law enforcement agencies that request it. One example came following the horrific school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, when Uvalde’s mayor reached out to the department for assistance. We put together a team of experts to conduct an after-action review of law enforcement activity that tragic day, to identify lessons learned and help provide a roadmap for stronger community safety and engagement going forward. And last spring, I announced the Law Enforcement Knowledge Lab, a one-stop shop where communities and police departments can go online and access resources, research, and training modules on promising practices in policing — drawn from our years of experience with consent decrees and other training and technical assistance. Through the Knowledge Lab, police departments can also access direct assistance from subject matter experts on a variety of key topics to help advance constitutional policing in their organizations.
The department is committed to protecting democracy for all Americans and to our original mission of protecting fundamental rights like voting rights. We continue to further this mission by recognizing the many ways we can advance civil rights, but in the face of today’s challenges to our democracy, we must stay focused, hopeful, and work to make a real difference. It matters to have a Justice Department that does all it can to live up to equal justice under law. And it matters to have law students like all of you rolling up your sleeves and striving toward equal justice too — in your classes, in clinics and internships, and someday soon, outside in the world.
Thank you, and I look forward to continuing this conversation and your questions.