The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Building on This Year's Momentum

Opinion by Wade Henderson, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Although 2009 was trying in many respects, the civil rights community has much to celebrate. Even as we grappled with the effects of the worst economic downturn in more than 70 years, civil and human rights advocates made significant progress on a number of vitally important issues from pay equity to hate crime enforcement.

Indeed, this progress was exactly what the nation sought in voting overwhelmingly for change in November 2008. The election of Barack Obama as the nation’s 44th president was a watershed moment in American history, a moment that is the direct result of the civil rights movement’s work over the last 60 years.

And though his administration has brought with it fresh, open, and dynamic thinking, and a commitment to basic fairness and equal opportunity for all Americans, our critical role as advocates who make the case for the importance of civil rights legislation and equal opportunity policies cannot be abdicated.

The challenge for us heading into this year’s midterm elections and the second session of the 111th Congress, in which immigration reform, financial reform, education reform, and another Supreme Court vacancy are likely to be major issues, is to capitalize on last year’s momentum by sustaining the interest of the millions of Americans – many of them the very people we represent – who were inspired to vote in the 2008 election. This year, we’ll need the same kind of energy and engagement from successes in 2009.

Within weeks of becoming president, President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, which restored the ability for workers to challenge pay discrimination in court; signed a reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program, expanding its coverage to include 11 million low-income children; and signed an economic recovery bill that helps millions of our nation’s most vulnerable citizens and keeps the economy from falling into further disrepair. These three laws were top priorities for The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights.

In addition, the civil rights community played a critical role in a number of important appointments, including Eric Holder, the nation’s first African-American U.S. attorney general; Thomas E. Perez, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice; Harold Koh, legal advisor to the U.S. Department of State; and Michael Posner, assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights, and labor at the State Department.

These are tremendous achievements for the civil rights community. Both Holder and Perez are fully focused on the challenge of restoring the Department of Justice’s ability to vigorously enforce our federal civil rights laws. Koh and Posner are equally qualified to help guide our nation’s foreign policy and ensure that these policies are consistent with human rights principles that ensure all people around the world are treated fairly.

By year’s end another of our top priorities – the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act – was signed into law. Along with removing unnecessary obstacles to federal prosecution of hate crimes and providing local law enforcement with vital resources, the new law expands the definition of federal hate crimes to include sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability. In fact, it is the first federal civil rights enforcement statute that explicitly protects LGBT Americans. This is no small feat. Many of these successes were long overdue. But let’s not kid ourselves; these were not easy victories. The hate crimes law, for instance, has been pending in Congress in some form or another for more than a decade. Perhaps, though, nothing has been more hard-fought this year than health care reform and the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor to be the nation’s first Hispanic American Supreme Court justice.

While the jury is still out, Congress may pass the first serious health care reform legislation since it created Medicare in 1965. This too would be no small feat, even though the debate surrounding the legislation was highly politicized, misinformed, and divisive. This debate succeeded in obscuring the fundamental goal of reform – to provide critical care to every single American – and confused many of the very people that are most in need of health care. Still, though the bill will not be perfect, it is likely to expand coverage to many American families in need.

In Justice Sotomayor, President Obama found an exceptionally qualified candidate. Her professional experience spans nearly every aspect of the law – prosecutor, partner in a law firm, trial judge, and federal judge. She has more federal judicial trial and appellate experience than any Supreme Court justice confirmed in a century. Yet some senators and other public figures chose to focus on statements pulled out of context to paint Justice Sotomayor as an ideologue with no respect for the rule of law.

Ultimately, Justice Sotomayor was confirmed and the nation is better for it. But her confirmation battle is a reminder that we must always be ready and willing to go to bat for fairness, decency, and the belief that the United States can and must provide equal opportunity for all its citizens no matter which party is in power.

The Leadership Conference has been fighting for an America as good as its ideals since 1950. This year, we will celebrate our 60th anniversary. Although our country has changed dramatically in that time, diverse coalitions like ours continue to play a critical role in fulfilling our nation’s promise of providing equal rights and equal opportunity for all Americans.

We have our work cut out for us. This is an election year with yet another long list of priorities for all of us to tackle. At the top of that list is addressing the fallout from the economy – the jobs and foreclosure crises. We must work with Congress and the Obama administration to ensure that struggling homeowners can keep their homes. We must push Congress and the administration through public-private partnerships to create jobs and restore basic stability to millions of Americans hard hit by the recession. And with health care nearly done, we’ll have to push Congress and the administration to fix the nation’s broken immigration system and to provide quality education for all children.

None of this will be easy. As we celebrate our recent successes, we are emboldened by the new challenges that we face, the new generations that join the fight, and the new strategies and tactics we can employ to bring about the change we’d like to see in our country.

Because there is still more work to be done.

Wade Henderson is the president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and The Leadership Conference Education Fund.