Download the full report and hear the teleconference online

(Washington, DC – Aug.31, 2005) Today, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) formally announced opposition to John G. Roberts, Jr.’s nomination to the U. S. Supreme Court. At a press conference in Washington, D.C., LDF released a report detailing what it called Roberts’ “consistent and active advocacy” for weakening federal enforcement of voting rights, affirmative action, school desegregation, fair housing, and other civil rights protections.

With the announcement of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement, LDF Director-Counsel and President Theodore M. Shaw called upon President Bush to nominate a successor who “is not ideologically rigid and predictable, but who is fair and open-minded, and committed to protecting the advances in civil rights that we as a nation have achieved.”

Two months later, following LDF’s analysis of thousands of documents from the National Archives and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Shaw expressed regret that Roberts appears not to meet this standard.

LDF’s research has revealed that Roberts has a strong and consistent record of advocating regressive positions on matters of civil rights, sometimes to the extreme. Roberts played a key role at the Justice Department at a time of severe retrenchment on civil rights. While many of his available records are from his early legal career, his views in opposition to civil rights laws were strongly held over a long period, and we have no evidence that he has changed his views.

Shaw said that if the known views of Roberts were enshrined in Supreme Court decisions:

* Federal courts would have been stripped of jurisdiction to order remedies in cases that employed student transportation in school desegregation cases. The Supreme Court's 1971 decision, Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, sanctioning the use of busing as a remedy would have been overruled and school desegregation would have been virtually impossible.

* Federal Court habeas corpus review of state court criminal convictions would have been abolished. This would have meant that claims of racial discrimination in jury selection, such as that upheld by the Supreme Court in Miller-El v. Cockrell, would not have been heard. In fact, regardless of the merits, federal courts would never be able to review the constitutionality of a state court decision in a criminal conviction, including a sentence of death.

* The Voting Rights Act's application to electoral schemes that have the effect of diluting minority voting strength would have been barred, even in the face of racially polarized voting. In other words, jurisdictions could maintain at-large schemes that prevent minority representation.

* The Fair Housing Act’s long established “effects test,” which bans practices and procedures that have the effect of discriminating in the sale or rental of housing, would have been eliminated.

* The rule that prohibits colleges, universities and other institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, national origin, gender, or handicap would have been narrowed to apply only to the departments or units that receive the aid.

The report maintains that over the course of the nominee’s career, Roberts has advanced positions that would significantly hamper the ability of individuals to enforce federal statutory rights. “This is an important component of John Roberts’ overall record on civil rights, as the ability to ensure protections afforded by federal laws relating to Medicaid, public housing and other social safeguards is of paramount concern to low-income communities,” the report warns.

Contrary to claims by some Roberts' supporters, the report found no indication in his subsequent private practice that Roberts’ strong critiques of race-conscious affirmative action programs have changed since his days in the Reagan Justice Department. It also found no evidence that he has repudiated his earlier views supporting a narrow construction of federal civil rights laws.

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Founded in 1940 under the leadership of Thurgood Marshall, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund (LDF) is the nation’s oldest civil rights law firm. It won the historic U.S. Supreme Court case, Brown v. Board of Education in 1954, which ended officially sanctioned public school desegregation and overturned the “separate but equal” doctrine of legally sanctioned discrimination. Although initially affiliated with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, LDF has been an entirely separate organization since 1957. See background and the full report at http://www.naacpldf.org.

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