10
Unfinished Business and the Work Ahead
When Congress passed and President
Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act 60 years
ago, the federal government, with bipartisan
support, made a formal and ongoing
commitment to defend the civil rights of all the
people of this nation. Today, that commitment
is being renewed.
In his inaugural address on January 20, 2021,
President Joseph R. Biden told the nation that
“A cry for racial justice some 400 years in the
making moves us. The dream of justice for all
will be deferred no longer…And now, a rise in
political extremism, white supremacy, domestic
terrorism that we must confront and we will
defeat. To overcome these challenges — to
restore the soul and to secure the future of
America — requires more than words.”
On many fronts, the Biden administration has
taken that call to action seriously. As noted in a
June 2023 Leadership Conference report, for
example, the Biden administration’s executive
action on civil and human rights was a hallmark
of its policy agenda during the administration’s
first two years. Of the more than 100 executive
orders the administration had issued at the
time, approximately half had civil rights
implications, including on LGBTQ+ rights, fair
labor protections, health care access, and
immigration reform, among many others. Most
notably, this administration has publicly
centered equity in its work, and its executive
orders on advancing racial equity issued on
January 21, 2021 and February 16, 2023 are
groundbreaking. Of course, there is more the
administration can and should do, including in
its full implementation of these important
executive orders.
At the Department of Justice, The Leadership
Conference was especially pleased with the
president’s nomination of former President and
CEO Vanita Gupta to be the first woman of color
and first civil rights lawyer to serve as associate
attorney general (she departed DOJ earlier this
year) — and with the appointment of Kristen
Clarke, a former Leadership Conference board
member and ally in the civil rights community, to
be the first woman confirmed and first Black
woman ever to serve as assistant attorney
general for civil rights. Together with Attorney
General Garland, the DOJ has been back in the
business of enforcing the nation’s federal civil
rights laws, including the Civil Rights Act, and
has restored independence and integrity to the
department’s critical work.
President Biden has also, to date, appointed
more than 200 lifetime federal judges, and
many have been supported by civil rights
organizations for being highly qualified,
fair-minded, demographically and professionally
diverse, and committed to civil and human
rights — including Justice Ketanji Brown
Jackson, the first Black woman and first former
public defender to serve on the U.S. Supreme
Court. These lifetime judges will decide
important issues — from voting rights to equal
pay to health care access. Our urgent task is to
create a more ethical and fair federal judiciary
that works for all of us. There is so much at
stake, and it is critical that the president and all
senators work to fill all judicial vacancies with
diverse nominees who are committed to equal
justice. This will matter for decades to come.