Civil rights laws — from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the Lily Ledbetter Equal Pay Act of 2009 — have been instrumental in bending the arc of this country. Among the most important of these civil rights laws is the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which created the Civil Rights division of the Department of Justice and made the attorney general the chief enforcer of the nation’s civil rights laws.
This awesome responsibility makes the nomination of Senator Jeff Sessions to serve as attorney general among the most audacious and unfortunate of the President-elect’s cabinet picks. We have now had two full days of hearings on Senator Sessions, and it is still hard to imagine a nominee with a more troubling record on race, gender equality, LGBTQ rights or immigrant protection than Jeff Sessions.
Read the full op-ed here.
