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Editorial Boards Slam Perez Over Panthers Case

By Andrew Ramonas

The editorial boards of The Washington Times and Washington Examiner ratcheted up the pressure this week on the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights chief in their criticism of the department’s handling of a voter intimidation case against the New Black Panther Party.

Thomas Perez (photo by Channing Turner / Main Justice)

The newspapers have previously blasted the DOJ for dropping charges against all but one defendant in a case in which the group’s members wore military-style clothing as they stood outside a Philadelphia polling station in November 2008.

This week the newspapers turned up the heat on Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, Thomas Perez. He wrote in an Aug. 11 letter to the chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights that he will continue to bar former Voting Section Chief Christopher Coates from testifying before the commission, an independent government body. The panel is investigating the case against the militant group.

The Washington Times editorial board wrote Tuesday that decision to withhold testimony from Coates was the “Justice Department’s latest thumb in the eye of its critics.” The Washington Examiner then wrote Thursday that the Civil Rights Division doesn’t have its priorities in line.

The Examiner editors said that Perez “is apparently so busy suing Arizona law enforcement and blocking Ivy League colleges from using the Amazon Kindle that he doesn?t think flagrant violations of the laws protecting voters are worth his time.”

The Civil Rights Division chief had written in his letter that Coates is not “the appropriate witness to testify regarding current Division policies” because the prosecutor has been posted to South Carolina since January.

Perez also defended the DOJ’s handling of the case, writing that a “policy of selective enforcement” does not exist in the Civil Rights Division. He noted that the DOJ is working to prevent an alleged attempt by Ike Brown, a black Democratic leader in Mississippi, to discriminate against white voters.

“There should be no misunderstanding: the Civil Rights Division is firmly committed to the evenhanded application of the law, without regard to the race of the victims or perpetrators of unlawful behavior,” Perez wrote. “Any suggestion to the contrary is simply untrue.”

Full post as published by Main Justice on August 19, 2010 (boomark / email).