Civil Rights Enforcement by Bush Administration Lags

• Are Your Civil Rights Being Ignored?

Key data from the Justice Department and the federal courts show that the government's enforcement of civil rights cases -- an extremely rare event under all recent presidents -- sharply declined during the Bush years. The federal government is prosecuting fewer and fewer civil rights violations -- but it's not because people aren't filing complaints. In fact, according to a new study by a Syracuse University research institute, the Justice Department prosecuted nearly half the number of civil rights cases in 2003, that it did a half-decade earlier. People are still complaining about civil-rights violations, but the government isn't doing as much about it, the report finds. The Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC), which relied on statistics from the Department of Justice, found that in 1999, the federal government brought action against 159 civil rights violators; last year it prosecuted 84.  The number of complaints, which includes everything from hate crimes to fair housing, has remained steady, TRAC found.  The civil rights enforcement record of the Bush Administration appears to conflict with a recent claim by President Bush as he campaigned for re-election. In a major speech to the annual meeting of the Urban League on July 23, Mr. Bush told the large audience that progress for African-Americans, and all Americans, depended on guaranteeing them full protection of civil rights and equality before the law. "My administration and its Justice Department," he asserted, "has vigorously enforced the civil rights laws. " [more] and [more]