DOJ Attorney Exiled to South Carolina for Role in New Black Panther Party Suit

Hans von Spakovsky has a new piece at National Review discussing the exile of Christopher Coates, the career attorney at DOJ who recommended DOJ's Civil Rights Division file a suit over voter intimidation against the New Black Panther Party for their actions outside a Philadelphia polling place on Election Day in 2008. As most know, "[p]olitical appointees at the Justice Department overrode Coates's recommendation. They ordered him to dismiss the lawsuit against all but one of the defendants, even though they were in default because they did not defend themselves. The eventual injunction against the defendant with the weapon was laughably weak."

Coates has now been exiled to South Carolina by Eric Holder. Well, officially he was sent by Assistant Attorney General (and political appointee) Thomas Perez, but as von Spakovsky notes, "It's virtually inconceivable that the move was made without consultation and approval from the highest offices of the Justice Department."

Von Spakovsky laments the current attitude in Washington on enforcing the law:

Washington today is infested with advocacy groups run by radicals who view the law — particularly federal civil-rights statutes like the Voting Rights Act — as a weapon to be used to further ideological goals, cement political control, and demonize political opponents. By contrast, fair-minded liberals and conservatives — at least those with whom I worked in the Civil Rights Division during the Bush administration — saw their duty as one of enforcing the law in a neutral manner within the narrow and objective strictures of federal statutes and case law. They did not assume the federal government had a monopoly on civil-rights virtue. They insisted that career attorneys recognize the proper role of the judiciary in what they asked courts to do. They recognized the need for restraint in certain investigatory activity lest the threat of federal power produce results that the law would not command.

The RNLA agrees with von Spakovsky. We echoed the same sentiments last month when RNLA leadership wrote to Attorney General Holder concerning the New Black Panther Party dismissal and called on the DOJ to abide by its stated mission of ensuring the "fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans." Unfortunately, as evidenced by the exile of Coates, it looks like the "fair and impartial administration of justice" is taking a back seat to political considerations.