sharp decline in enforcement of a section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits electoral rules with discriminatory effects

Report Examines Civil Rights Enforcement During Bush Years - NYTimes.com
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The 180-page report, obtained by The New York Times, is densely packed with statistics about civil rights enforcement by the division’s sections. The accountability office also examined a sampling of matters that were closed without further action, finding several cases — including the curtailed voter intimidation inquiry — in which supervisors rejected the recommendations of career lawyers to go forward.

The report represents a comprehensive review of the division’s litigation activity in the Bush administration. When compared with the Clinton administration, its findings show a significant drop in the enforcement of several major antidiscrimination and voting rights laws. For example, lawsuits brought by the division to enforce laws prohibiting race or sex discrimination in employment fell from about 11 per year under President Bill Clinton to about 6 per year under President George W. Bush.

The study also found a sharp decline in enforcement of a section of the Voting Rights Act that prohibits electoral rules with discriminatory effects, from more than four cases a year under Mr. Clinton to fewer than two cases a year under Mr. Bush.

Joseph Rich, a civil rights lawyer who has been invited by Democrats to testify and was among those given an early copy of the report, said it provided hard data that the division was politicized in the Bush years.

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Democrats and civil rights groups said the Republicans were seeking to distract from the new evidence. During the Bush years, such criticism was based on anecdotes and incomplete data. But a report released in January by the department’s inspector general, citing internal e-mail and personnel files, confirmed that political appointees sought to hire conservatives and block liberals for career positions, contrary to civil service laws.

Similarly, the new Government Accountability Office report presents comprehensive data that demonstrates a fall-off in certain kinds of civil rights enforcement during the Bush years.

The office also found that case files often had no information explaining why supervisors had decided to close cases, sometimes against the recommendation of career officials. In a companion report, it also found that six years of internal audits about the division’s case-tracking system were missing.

In a prepared opening statement, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, Thomas E. Perez, said the reports about hiring and enforcement activity “underscore the point that the division, in recent years, was not doing all that it could to fulfill our responsibility to enforce all the civil rights laws fairly and aggressively.” ...