Acosta Nomination Watched by Civil Rights Organizations
Feature Story by civilrights.org staff - 7/18/2003
The nomination of R. Alexander Acosta to head the U. S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division will go to committee in the upcoming week. Experts predict that Acosta, nominated last month, will be approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee and will win confirmation from the full Senate.Acosta, a conservative Hispanic lawyer, has split minority and civil rights advocates. "There is no broad based support for Acosta among civil rights groups, as of yet," said Nancy Zirkin, public policy director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Several organizations are expressing concern."
Acosta is being hailed by Latino and Asian-American groups who cite his accessibility and work on language issues, as he successfully defended a legal challenge to federal access rules for people with limited English skills. He also helped enforce voting rights law for non-English speakers.
However, liberal civil rights groups are wary of his credentials as well as his conservative ideology. At the hearing, Democrats are expected to pepper the nominee with questions about what is occurring now in the civil rights division and where he intends to take the division in the future.
Acosta is projected to succeed Ralph Boyd. "We hope that he will do a better job than Boyd," Zirkin said. "We were very disappointed in Boyd's performance."
