Sessions’ past raises questions about future attorney general
As the nation marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. on Monday, the future of civil rights for all Americans will soon rest in the hands of a new president and his attorney general.
On that score, President-elect Donald Trump’s choice for that job, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., is troubling. While Sessions’ confirmation seems almost inevitable after a polished performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, the nominee’s encouraging promises cannot erase grave concerns about whether he will rise to the toughest challenges of the job.
At times in the recent past, Sessions’ instincts have been the opposite of what one would seek in the nation’s chief law enforcement officer. Asked in October about Trump’s remarks that he could grab women by their genitals, Sessions said it would be “a stretch” to “characterize that as sexual assault.” In 2015, he decried the Supreme Court ruling granting same-sex couples the right to marry, while two years earlier he celebrated the Supreme Court ruling obliterating the central enforcement tool in the Voting Rights Act.
At the hearing, Sessions proclaimed he would uphold laws, even ones with which he disagrees. And he reversed himself on his earlier sexual assault comments. But it is not enough for an attorney general to be a sometimes skeptical upholder of the law. The attorney general must be a champion of the rights of Americans, particularly those who — because of religion, race, gender or ethnicity — may find themselves under attack.
Will he be up to the job? Some of his positions raise questions:
Voting rights. Sessions, who has called a key section of the Voting Rights Act intrusive, was, at best, equivocal about how he’d handle new voter ID laws, including one in North Carolina that a federal appeals court ruled was drafted to “target African Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Immigration. While other conservative Republicans have worked to fashion bipartisan immigration reform, Sessions has been one of the hardest hard-liners against a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants already here.
Police misconduct. Sessions refused to be pinned down on whether he’d preserve legal agreements, called consent decrees, with police departments that have demonstrated a pattern of discrimination against African Americans. Sessions expressed more concern that law enforcement “has been unfairly maligned ... for the unacceptable actions of a few ... bad actors.”
Property rights. Sessions is a fierce proponent of civil asset forfeiture, which allows the federal government to seize property under the absurd theory that the property itself was involved in crime, even if its owners have neither been accused nor convicted of a crime.
Sessions’ critics frequently cite decades-old history as reason to oppose his nomination. But without going back 30 years, there is enough in recent history to raise concerns. He would not be our choice for the job.
Attorneys general are called upon to rein in the president who nominated them when that president veers from the law. Sessions vowed to do so, but it’s worth asking when Sessions might think it necessary. He was one of Trump’s earliest supporters while Trump was vowing to ban Muslim immigrants. Sessions testified he opposes such a ban based solely on religion, but not enough to have backed away from Trump when it might have mattered during the campaign.
Sessions has the right résumé — Alabama attorney general, federal prosecutor and U.S. senator. Last week, he laid down ambitious markers vowing to be an impartial enforcer of the law and to “say no” to the president when he must. If he’s confirmed, the country will be watching.