National Urban League n Obama Administration Scorecard n www.nul.org5CIVIL RIGHTS AND JUDICIAL AND EXECUTIVE APPOINTMENTS SuccessesProtection of Civil Rights SUPERIORAppointments of the first and second African-American U.S. attorney generals.The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has protected the civil rights of individuals in housing, lending, employment, voting and education, including the defense of disability rights, and through hate crimes and law enforcement misconduct prosecutions and law enforcement pattern and practice cases. The Office for Civil Rights at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Education also pursued the protection of the civil rights of individuals in an assertive and systematic fashion.Enactment of the Lilly Ledbetter Act to restore protections against pay discrimination.Diversifying the Federal Bench and CabinetSUPERIORPresident Obama has made 62 lifetime appointments of African Americans to serve on the federal bench. This includes nine African American circuit court judges. It also includes the appointment of 53 African American district court judges—including 26 African American women appointed to the federal court, which is more African-American women appointed by any President in history. President Obama’s second-term cabinet was more diverse than any in American history.President Obama’s second-term cabinet was more diverse than any in American history.Relationship with the Civil Rights Community SUPERIORPresident Obama and his team established an ongoing, direct relationship and dialogue with leaders of the African-American civil rights community and often consulted these groups on public policy.These leaders included Marc H. Morial of the National Urban League, Ben Jealous and Cornell William Brooks of the NAACP, the Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, Melanie Campbell of the National Coalition for Black Civic Participation and Black Women’s Roundtable, Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, Sherrilyn Ifill of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, and Kristen Clarke Of the National Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.Restoration of the Voting Rights Act GOODThe administration filed lawsuits against Texas and North Carolina to invalidate voter suppression laws passed by those states’ legislatures and aggressively pursued enforcement of the remaining provisions of the act after the Supreme Court’s Shelby v. Holder decision. We do believe the president and his administration should have deployed the power and prestige of the bully pulpit to speak more forcefully against voter suppression and in support of restoring the Voting Rights Act.
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