Newsroom

Kristen Clarke appears to discuss the lack of racial diversity among the ranks in the Trump administration.

The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is asking Chief Judge Keva Landrum-Johnson to prevent courts from assessing fees against defendants in what the group calls a direct violation of Louisiana statutes, with the hope of reversing some verdicts that have already been enforced.

“The Commerce Department claims the citizenship question is needed to help with Voting Rights Act enforcement,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “However, enforcement of the Voting Rights Act has virtually come to a grinding halt.”

Kristen Clarke, president of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, told Reuters news agency the question exposed “xenophobic and anti-immigrant policy positions from [the Trump] administration”.

“This is an arbitrary and untested decision that all but guarantees that the Census will not produce a full and accurate count of the population as the constitution requires,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“This is a clear attempt to politicize the process by discouraging minority communities and immigrant communities from participating in the count,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.

Two civil rights groups sued the Office of Management and Budget on Wednesday, asking a D.C. federal court to make the agency release documents related to its decision to block an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission initiative aimed at finding gender- and race-based pay gaps.

Civil rights groups are suing the Trump administration for documents detailing its decision to halt an Obama-era rule that would have required businesses to track how much they pay employees of different races and genders.