The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

August 1985: Volume 1, Number 1

Why Reynolds Lost

On June 27, by a vote of 10-8, the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected the Reagan Administration's nomination of Wm. Bradford Reynolds to be Associate Attorney General, the number three position in the Department. By identical votes of 9-9, the Committee refused even to report the nomination to the floor without a recommendation or with an adverse recommendation.

In part, Reynolds lost because members of the Committee felt he had not been candid in some of his answers. Senator Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ.) stated that Reynolds had shown "a consistent pattern of bending and altering the truth in a self-serving way." But Reynolds was also rejected because, in his four years as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights he had often in the words of Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA.) "placed himself above the law." In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Ralph G. Neas, Executive Director of LCCR, referred to the policies of the Civil Rights Division under Brad Reynolds as a disgrace. "In his four years at the Department of Justice, he has repeatedly repudiated the enforcement policies of the previous six Republican and Democratic administrations. He has consistently ignored the intent of Congress when it enacted the nation's civil rights laws. And he has routinely defied the decisions of the Federal Judiciary." Benjamin Hooks, Executive Director of the NAACP and Chairperson of the LCCR, stated "During Mr. Reynolds tenure as chief of the Civil Rights Division he has shown no concern about what the law is, nor with enforcing the law as it has developed ... his concern has been to attempt to reshape the law for the ideological and political purposes of the administration."

The Reynolds' record was painstakingly documented by the testimony of more than 20 civil rights organizations and by careful committee review of Justice Department case files. The committee record clearly established that the administration has used busing and quotas as a smokescreen to mask the worst civil rights record of any administration in more than half a century - in education, housing, voting, employment, disability rights, and women's rights (For more detail see Neas Testimony).

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Some of the most disturbing testimony dealt with the Department's abdication of its responsibility to protect voting rights. Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act seeks to prevent discrimination by requiring Department preclearance of all electoral changes in nine states and parts of 13 others which have a history of voting discrimination. The following examples are from testimony provided by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund.

Since the Reagan Administration took office in 1981, the number of electoral changes submitted for preclearance has risen dramatically, largely as a result of redistricting following the 1980 census. From 1965-1980, the DOJ received 33,798 requests for election changes. Between 1981 and 1985, 36,968 such requests were received, 52.2 percent of all submissions since enactment of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. However, during that same period, 1981-85, only 232 letters of objection were sent, 22.2 percent of all objections since enactment of the law. Put another way, between 1965 and 1981, 2.4 percent of all requests for election changes (33,798) were objected to by DOJ. Since 1981, less than one percent (.63) of the requests have been objected to, while the number of submissions has increased.

The DOJ initially objected to a change in the method of appointing members to the Greene County, Alabama Racing Commission because the change appeared to prevent the appointment of blacks. Four months later, after protests from Alabama state officials, this objection was withdrawn for the asserted reason that DOJ lacked jurisdiction to disapprove the change. This position was challenged in court and a three-judge panel ruled that DOJ was wrong, enjoining the change until it had been properly reviewed by the DOJ (Hardy v. Wallace 603 F. Supp. 174 (1985)).

DOJ approved a new congressional redistricting plan for Louisiana over the objection of Louisiana black state legislators and DOJ staff attorneys. The plan was approved even though Louisiana Governor David Treen had threatened to veto an earlier legislatively enacted plan because it contained a majority black congressional district. Reynolds conferred extensively with Governor Treen, but did not meet with those who objected to the plan. The districting, which resulted in a configuration so misshaped that it resembled a duck, was invalidated by a federal court (Major v. Treen 574 F. Supp. 325 (1983).

A North Carolina State legislative reapportionment plan was approved although the plan contained districts that diluted black voting strength by at-large multi-county voting and by fracturing black population concentrations to deny black voters a majority black district. Subsequently, a three-judge district court struck down the districts DOJ had approved (Gingles v. Edmisten 590 F. Supp. 345 (E.D.N.C. 1984), prob. juris. noted, 53 U.S.L.W. 3776 (April 29, 1985)). The DOJ has obtained a review by the Supreme Court of the three-judge decision.

DOJ approved a Montgomery, Alabama city redistricting plan even though it reduced the number of majority-black districts and even though staff attorneys concluded that the plan was intentionally discriminatory. In a private suit, brought after DOJ's approval a district court ruled that the plan was racially discriminatory in both purpose and effect (Buskey v. Oliver 565 F. Supp. 1473 (M.D. Ala. 1983)).

DOJ approved a Selma, Alabama polling place change from a community center in a black neighborhood to the Dallas County courthouse, opposite the sheriff's office. As a result of the change, voting in the precinct fell from 55 percent to 36 percent. DOJ's approval was needed for the change and the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights gave that approval over the objection of staff attorneys. Testimony revealed that the new polling place was a five dollar taxi ride from the old polling place. Despite the history of Selma, Reynolds reportedly did not understand why blacks might be deterred from registering at the courthouse. In approving the change, Reynolds asserted that any link to lower black voter turnout was a "fanciful conclusion."