The Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Justice Department is headed for a dramatic makeover under President-elect Joe Biden, who has pledged to make racial equality a centerpiece of his agenda.
Biden will seek to return the division to its original purpose, focusing on anti-discrimination laws that protect millions of people in minority groups that were mostly ignored in the Trump years, said Vanita Gupta, who led the division under Obama from 2014 to early 2017. That means more enforcement of protections in housing, education and the workplace, as well as pushing for better local policing following a tumultuous year of racial unrest, she said.
"This will be an even bigger pivot because of what the Trump administration represents,” said Gupta, who now runs the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. "It’s been a kind of systematic erosion of civil rights enforcement that is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent times or recent administrations.”