Month: December 2022

Source: United States Department of Justice News

The Justice Department, together with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announced today the entry of a court order that resolves the government’s long-running civil racketeering lawsuit against the largest United States’ cigarette companies. The lawsuit was filed in 1999 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.  Following a 2004-2005 trial, the court found that the cigarette companies had defrauded consumers about the health dangers associated with cigarette smoking.  Today’s order imposes the last of several corrective remedies ordered by the court.

Under the order, defendants are now required to display signs in retail stores featuring corrective statements about the health effects and addictiveness of smoking. The order applies to defendants Altria, Philip Morris USA Inc. (PM USA) and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJRT) as well as to four cigarette brands owned by ITG Brands LLC (ITG). 

“Justice Department attorneys have worked diligently for over 20 years to hold accountable the tobacco companies that defrauded consumers about the health risks of smoking,” said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “Today’s resolution implements the last remedy of this litigation to ensure that consumers know the true dangers of the smoking products they may consider purchasing.”

“Cigarette companies misled the public for decades about the health risks of smoking and were ordered by a federal court to implement a series of corrective measures,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian M. Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “All of these measures have been implemented, except one—the display of corrective statements in retail stores that sell cigarettes. Today’s order requiring implementation of that remaining remedy is a major achievement that will educate American consumers and save lives.”

“This is an important moment in the history of cancer control in the United States,” said Associate Director William Klein of the National Cancer Institute’s Behavioral Research program. “Smoking causes about 30% of all cancer deaths in the United States, and therefore the court-ordered corrective statements appearing at the point of cigarette sale will help support our mission to reduce the burden of cancer. We are grateful to our colleagues at the Department of Justice for having completed this significant work.”

“We know that tobacco product marketing in retail stores influences young people to start using tobacco, increases tobacco product consumption, and makes it harder for people to quit,” said Director Deirdre Lawrence Kittner of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Office on Smoking and Health. “These statements will be an important complement to evidence-based strategies that prevent and reduce commercial tobacco use—the leading preventable cause of disease and death in the United States.”

“It is critical that we use our expertise and the full power of the law to protect Americans from tobacco-related disease and death,” said Director Brian King of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. “Today’s order further emphasizes the federal government’s commitment to take whatever steps that are necessary to protect public health, including preventing false and misleading labeling and advertising by manufacturers.”

There are approximately 300,000 retail locations in the United States sell cigarettes. About 200,000 of those retailers have retail merchandising agreements with PM USA, RJRT and ITG that allow the companies to control how their cigarettes are displayed at those retailers’ stores. The order entered by the court today requires these companies to amend their agreements with retailers to require the placement of corrective statements in retail stores. The issuance of the order followed an evidentiary hearing open to all retailers that wished to testify about the order’s effects on them. 

The corrective statements, which are displayed on color signs designed to be eye-catching, provide truthful information to consumers relating to: the adverse health effects of smoking; the addictiveness of smoking and nicotine; the lack of health benefits from cigarettes advertised as light or low tar; cigarette companies’ manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery; and the adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke. The statements include, among other things, that: 

• Smoking cigarettes causes numerous diseases and on average 1,200 American deaths every day;
• The nicotine in cigarettes is highly addictive and that cigarettes have been designed to create and sustain addiction;
• So-called light, low-tar and natural cigarettes are just as harmful as regular cigarettes; and
• Secondhand smoke causes disease and death in people who do not smoke.

Below are examples of two of the signs to be displayed in retail stores adjacent to cigarette displays:

Examples of the remaining signs that will be displayed may be found at https://www.justice.gov/civil/consumer-protection-branch/case/philip-morris/settlement-images.

The order will go into effect on July 1, 2023 and gives defendants three months to post the required corrective statements. Retailers will display the signs for 21 months thereafter. The corrective statements will be in both English and Spanish, with the latter required in geographic areas with significant Spanish-speaking populations. Independent auditors will periodically evaluate compliance with the order, and a tip line will be established so that the public may report incidents where they believe the statements are not being displayed properly or at all. The order further implements certain measures designed to discourage noncompliance, including specific consequences for retailers who fail to properly display the corrective statements after warnings and opportunities to cure.   

This point-of-sale corrective statements remedy is the only remedy issued by the trial court that has not yet been implemented. These corrective statements are part of a broader order aimed at preventing the cigarette companies from continuing to engage in fraud and deception. Starting in 2017, the corrective statements also appeared as newspaper advertisements, in television spots, on cigarette packages and on the companies’ websites and cigarette-brand social media pages. The point-of-sale statements were the subject of several appeals, however, and were to be the subject of a July 2022 hearing about their effects on retailers. In May 2022, the parties, along with representatives of several groups of retailers that sell cigarettes, negotiated an agreement that corrective statements would be displayed in retail stores for two years. The hard-fought negotiations were led by the U.S. Department of Justice and also involved various public health organizations who intervened as plaintiffs in the case.

Many Justice Department attorneys played significant and critical roles in this case over the past two decades, most notably Senior Trial Attorneys Daniel Crane-Hirsch and James T. Nelson, both of whom devoted thousands of hours to this case since joining the case team in the early 2000s. The most recent phase of the litigation is being handled by the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch, specifically Assistant Director Adam E. Lyons, Senior Trial Attorneys Daniel Crane-Hirsch, James Nelson, Stephen Tosini, Trial Attorneys Meredith B. Healy and Zachary A. Dietert, Assistant Director Lisa K. Hsiao and Assistant U.S. Attorney Leo Wise.

For more information about the Consumer Protection Branch and its enforcement efforts, visit its website at https://www.justice.gov/civil/consumer-protection-branch.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Shaylyn, for that kind introduction. Greetings to my Civil Rights Division family!

This feels like a homecoming to me. I was deeply honored to serve as head of the Civil Rights Division from 2014 to 2017. And today, as Associate Attorney General, it is a true privilege to continue working closely with the Civil Rights Division. I feel so fortunate also to serve with an Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General, a leadership team that truly believes that every part at the Justice Department, not just the Civil Rights Division, has a foundational obligation to protect civil rights.

And I want to acknowledge Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke and her leadership team and all of the former AAGs here of the Civil Rights Division who I am so deeply honored to see. It’s been too long. I also want to pay my respects to all of the current and former Division staff, your families, our civil rights stakeholders and partners. It’s really wonderful and heartwarming to see you all today.

At its founding in 1870, the Justice Department’s priority was to enforce civil rights guaranteed by the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments during Reconstruction, but it was almost 100 years before the creation of the Civil Rights Division. The precursor to the Civil Rights Division was the Civil Liberties Unit, established as part of the Criminal Division in 1939, and charged with studying constitutional and federal laws relating to civil rights. I don’t know how many of you knew that. I hadn’t tracked that until I was preparing this speech.

The Truman Committee actually first proposed creating the Division in 1947, to give federal civil rights enforcement the “prestige, power and efficiency” that it lacked while relegated to a unit within the Criminal Division. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 finally created the Civil Rights Division as a standalone division within the Justice Department. And the creation of a division exclusively to handle civil rights matters demonstrated a very significant elevation of civil – federal civil rights enforcement.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964, as you well know, faced fierce opposition from members of Congress who rejected civil rights and supported racial segregation. In an infamous example of this staunch opposition, Senator Strom Thurmond conducted the longest individual filibuster in history — speaking for 24 hours — against the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 faced similar opposition. But through the hard work, commitment and conviction of two presidents, members of Congress, courageous leaders and activists like Medgar Evers and Dr. King and so, so many more — people who risked their lives for their freedom and the freedom of others — the bill became reality. And the hard-fought battles surrounding the passage of these Acts signaled the civil rights battles that would be fought for years to come.

While the Civil Rights Act of 1957 set out a legal framework to prohibit discrimination, it largely addressed voting rights. But Black Americans were facing rampant and widespread discrimination not only in access to the ballot, but in almost every area of their lives. And the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964 barred discrimination beyond voting — prohibiting discrimination in employment, public accommodations, schools and more. It also enlarged the categories that – people that the law protects, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, religion and national origin. In doing so, it forever broadened the mandate of the Civil Rights Division — committing it to upholding the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly the most vulnerable among us. And the 1965 Voting Rights Act addressed the limitations of the 1957 Act, by giving the Division groundbreaking systemic authority to address racial discrimination in voting.

The mission of the Civil Rights Division has not wavered. Through its 11 sections, the Division ensures the right to vote and access to justice; it builds mutual trust and respect between communities and law enforcement through advancing constitutional policing; it ensures constitutional and humane conditions in our nation’s prisons and jails; prosecutes hate crimes and cases involving law enforcement misconduct; works to achieve equal opportunity for individuals with disabilities; works to end discrimination in housing, employment and schools; protects individuals from discrimination based on citizenship or immigration status; ensures that all federal agencies enforce civil rights statutes and Executive Orders that prohibit discrimination in federally conducted and assisted programs and activities; and supports and coordinates critical policy work of the department.

Over the more than six decades, the Civil Rights Division has made tremendous and significant progress and strides —

• In 1964, the Division prosecuted the murder of three civil rights workers in the “Mississippi Burning” case that became a civil rights milestone.

• In its earliest years, the Division staged an arduous state-by-state campaign to challenge voting discrimination in federal courts, leading to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

• You’ve worked for decades to combat segregation in schools using Title IV, Title VI and Title IX.

• The Division brought a landmark lawsuit in 1974, alleging nationwide employment discrimination against the basic steel industry. That suit led to consent decrees and back pay for over two million employees.

• In 1980, the Division filed — along with the Yonkers branch of the NAACP — the first case alleging systematic housing and school discrimination in the same suit. The case really brought to light concerted efforts to segregate housing for the purpose of segregating schools and ultimately led to Congress’s enactment of the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988.

• Many of you here work every day investigating systemic violations of federal civil rights laws by law enforcement agencies, using the authorities that were given to the Division by Congress in the wake of the Rodney King verdict.

• Between 1995 and 2000, the Division worked to combat religious discrimination and hate crimes through the National Church Arson Task Force, including opening over 900 investigations and prosecuting 300 defendants.

• You enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act and help ensure that people with disabilities are empowered to determine their own futures, defined by their whole selves.

• And in recent years, you’ve been working to disrupt and prosecute hate crimes through enforcement of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.

• You fought — and you continue to fight — for same-sex marriage, including through the government’s amicus brief in Obergefell v. Hodges, in which the Supreme Court recognized that the Constitution guarantees all people “equal dignity in the eyes of the law.”

I saw that hard work in action — Obergefell is just one example — when I served as Head of the Civil Rights Division. I remember that my very first meeting in October 2014 was with the team investigating the Ferguson Police Department, some of whose members are here today and have returned to the Justice Department. Events in Ferguson had deeply fractured our nation and renewed a national dialogue over public safety, racial justice and police-community trust.

And the Civil Rights Division immediately recognized the importance of this investigation to the nation. They worked assiduously, the team members, to uncover the full scope of the problems in the small Missouri city. The Ferguson investigation and report made headlines for exposing a system pervaded by racial bias and an undue focus on generating revenue through policing off of the backs of Black and Brown citizens in Ferguson, Missouri. It inspired work across the country to reform abusive and unlawful fines and fees practices and to improve access to justice. Ferguson brought to the national stage a conversation that had been happening in local towns and communities all across the country about police-community trust, about abusive criminal justice practices and more. That case showed the country the work you do every day to enforce civil rights laws and remedy injustice for the most vulnerable among us, in cases big and small, regardless of whether you’re making the front page or not.

You have a lot to be proud of from recent years as well. And Kristen, AAG Clarke, went through some of the most important highlights. This summer, you reached the second highest settlement in department history with a non-bank lender to stop redlining — a decades-old illegal practice in which lenders refuse to provide home loans in communities of color. You obtained convictions against the four police officers involved in the deprivation of George Floyd’s constitutional rights that led to his murder and death. You have vigorously combated hate crimes, as demonstrated in the federal hate crimes prosecution and convictions of the three men who murdered Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia.

And you continue to ensure that every American has the right to vote freely and without intimidation or harassment — initiating lawsuits to challenge discriminatory laws, filing statements of interest to support our work and the work of our partners across the country, issuing guidance to make clear that jurisdictions must comply with the voting rights laws as they redraw district lines, educating voters on their rights and providing election monitors to help ensure that every eligible voter can cast their ballot.

You have done all this, and so much more. And you should be incredibly proud. All of these accomplishments, and all of this progress is really because of your hard work and tireless dedication to advancing the highest ideals of freedom, justice and equality.

Today we are navigating a landscape of new, and constantly changing, challenges to civil and constitutional rights, sometimes more insidious than those that the Division has confronted in the past. We are also navigating the retrenchment of rights that we thought were untouchable and had been so hard fought. In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, taking away our most effective tool for preventing racially discriminatory election practices from going into effect before elections took place. The Civil Rights Division has doubled down on efforts to protect voting rights with the limited tools that we have available. Earlier this year, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to women throughout the country, taking away the constitutional right to abortion and increasing the urgency of our work, including enforcement of the FACE Act, to ensure continued lawful access to reproductive services.

These problems — new challenges, insidious challenges, the feeling sometimes that we take one step forward and two steps back — are not new. Throughout history, the law has justified what Dr. King called America’s “long night of racial injustice.” Through slavery and Jim Crow and so much more, the law codified exclusion, discrimination and racial terror. But the beauty of this country and the promise of our legal framework is not that we are perfect, but that we never stop working to make our highest ideals real for all Americans. And that is the work of the Civil Rights Division.

Progress is not linear, nor is it not inevitable, and it is always hard fought, and I know that you know that. Setbacks only underscore the importance of the Civil Rights Division and the mission that it was originally charged with and continues to do every day. Through each ebb and flow of civil rights progress, the Division has been unbowed. That is thanks to you, the career men and women who stay focused on the mission regardless of all of the noise in the background. As President Lyndon B. Johnson said after signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964: “Freedom can only be achieved where each new generation fights to renew and enlarge its meaning.” As Americans demand broader, more inclusive, definitions of freedom and equality, we are called to reimagine our ideals, and to use every tool that DOJ has available to make those ideals a reality.  

Now, more than ever, we need the work of the Civil Rights Division, to protect the legal framework that supports our principles of democracy and extends the promise of equality and opportunity to every person in this country, including those who have been overlooked, marginalized and without protection for too long.

Laws don’t vindicate rights — people do. And these people don’t fall from the sky. They are you. And we know that this work is never easy, and every inch of progress has been hard won, but we also know, because we see, that progress is possible. And we can make progress when people roll up their sleeves, reject cynicism and work to close the gap between what the law guarantees on paper and what the people’s lived experiences are. So let us never forget that together, we can achieve progress that creates ripples of hope across our country. And let us signal, too, to the world today that in America, the pursuit of a more perfect, more equal and more just union lives on. Thank you so much every day for all you do.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Nearly 62 years ago, James Meredith wrote to this department seeking help in overcoming the brick wall of state-sanctioned racism that blocked his admission to the University of Mississippi. He described a social structure of discrimination in Mississippi that was violent, entrenched and pervasive.

“I was born on a small farm in Attala County, Mississippi,” Meredith said. “The seventh of 13 children. I walked to school, over four miles each way, every day for 11 years. . . . [T]he White school bus passed us each and every morning. Of course, there was no Negro school bus. I never had a teacher during grade and high school with a college degree. . . . [But] I was indeed fortunate, because each day I passed [farms] with boys my own age and younger that fed cows all day and to this day most of them can’t even read road signs.”

Meredith asked the department to use “the power and influence of the federal government [to] ensure compliance with the laws as interpreted by the proper authority.” The Civil Rights Division heeded the call. The effort required intensive litigation and deployment of 31,000 armed soldiers, but in September 1962, the division’s deputy, John Doar, walked side-by-side with Meredith to register him at the university. Today, the University of Mississippi has a statue of Meredith that celebrates his courage in integrating the school.

Meredith’s experience highlights both the progress we have made and the centrality of the Civil Rights Division in our nation’s long pursuit of justice. In part because of cases we litigated and policies we pursued, whites-only buses no longer roll past Black children walking to school. The law no longer forces separation of the races. People of color no longer require the protection of federal troops to vindicate basic rights.

But despite the progress, we know that the Civil Rights Division is needed now more than ever. The racial hatred that required deployment of 31,000 troops in 1962 still persists today. In 2020, reported hate crimes rose to their highest levels in nearly two decades. More than 60% were motivated by race and ethnicity. More than half of those targeted Black people. We are also confronting antisemitism, anti-Asian, anti-LGBTQ, and anti-Muslim bias. In recent years, purveyors of hate in multiple cities, from Charlottesville to Pittsburgh and from Buffalo to El Paso, have massacred innocent people based on their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Longstanding economic discrimination continues, and the enduring consequences are devastating. Largely because of redlining — discrimination in mortgage lending based on the racial composition of a neighborhood — the median wealth of a Black family today is approximately $24,000, compared to $188,000 for a white family. Today, white families are 30% more likely to own a home than Black families are.

In addition, voting — the right the Supreme Court once described as “preservative of all other rights” — is under assault. In 2013, the Court in Shelby County, Alabama vs. Holder, struck down the division’s authority under the Voting Rights Act to review and clear voting changes by certain jurisdictions with long histories of voting discrimination. The ruling ushered in a boom market of voter suppression across the country. And now, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, another critical tool to battle voter suppression, is being further eroded in the courts.

And this year, in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court, for the first time in living memory, took away an established constitutional right, a woman’s freedom to make the most personal, fundamental decisions about her own body.

Nevertheless, I firmly believe in the opportunity for progress on civil rights in this country. I reject the defeatist predictions of decline and stagnation. Yes, we have work to do, but we at the Civil Rights Division are soldiering forward every day. We have challenges, but we  are meeting them. We are on the front lines of our nation’s modern day Civil Rights Movement and we are waging battle on multiple fronts. And far more than some may appreciate, we are winning; we are striking important blows for equality, for freedom and for the rule of law. We are making significant strides when it comes to some of the most pressing issues of our time – the need for law enforcement accountability, the need to eliminate hate root and branch, and the need to safeguard the rights of the most vulnerable among us.

Let’s start with hate crimes — threats, physical attacks, attacks on houses of worship, and mass murder. All of these events terrorize not only individuals and families, but entire communities because of their race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity and gender or gender identity. These atrocities threaten public safety, breed fear and insecurity, and demean human dignity. We will not tolerate the resurgence of hate. We are fighting it with every tool we have. The words of the prophet Isaiah mark our commitment: “This shall not stand.”

Since January of last year, we have charged more than 55 people with hate crimes, and convicted more than 40. We have prosecuted hate crimes based on race, religion, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity.

We secured guilty verdicts on federal hate crime charges against all three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery. And the evidence at trial revealed that the defendants’ strong racist beliefs led them to attack Mr. Arbery because he was a Black man. One defendant said he associated Black people with criminality and wanted to see them killed or harmed.

We obtained a 27-count indictment against the individual charged with killing 10 people in Buffalo, New York, just because they were Black.

And just last Friday, we secured a guilty plea from a white man in Mississippi who burned a cross on his front lawn intended to intimidate and instill fear in his Black neighbors. Also on Friday, a man in Nebraska was sentenced for leaving a noose – one of the most vile symbols in American history – to convey a threat of violence to a Black coworker. This is what hate in America looks like in 2022.

The trust that is so essential between law enforcement and the communities they serve rests on the rule of law, including scrupulous respect for constitutional rights. Every day, police officers put themselves in harm’s way to protect others. Most officers in the nation’s more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies, perform their duties with professionalism, bravery and integrity. But experience shows that unconstitutional conduct by police officers severely undermines both trust and public safety.

Since January of last year, the department has charged more than 50 defendants for willfully violating the constitutional rights of victims, and convicted more than 40. This number includes the convictions of all four police officers involved in the tragic killing of George Floyd.

The Civil Rights Division investigates and litigates civil cases involving “a pattern or practice of misconduct by law enforcement officers” that violates constitutional or federal rights. Our investigations focus on systemic reform of widespread practices and institutional change within police departments to safeguard the rights to be free from excessive force; unreasonable stops and searches; arrests without warrants or sufficient cause or in retaliation for exercising free speech rights.

In 2021 and 2022, we announced eight new pattern-or-practice investigations into the police departments of Louisville, Kentucky; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Phoenix, Arizona; Mount Vernon, New York; and Worcester, Massachusetts; the Special Victims Division of the New York City Police Department; the Louisiana State Police; and the Oklahoma City Police Department.

We also enforce the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Under that statute, we are investigating the practice of dispatching law enforcement officers in response to 911 or emergency calls involving people with mental health disabilities, rather than sending a mental health crisis team in appropriate circumstances. Just as we send an ambulance or a medic for a heart attack or diabetic emergency, communities should send a mental health team for a mental health crisis where it is feasible and appropriate. Exclusively dispatching law enforcement responders in such situations can unnecessarily escalate the crises, resulting at times in violence and death. About one fourth of all people killed by police are experiencing mental health issues.

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, national origin, sex and religion. And here we are investigating whether state and local government employers have engaged in a “pattern or practice” of employment discrimination. We have several open pattern-or-practice investigations involving law enforcement employers, including seven authorized since January 2021.

Over the summer, we received court approval of our proposal to remedy race discrimination against applicants to the Baltimore County Police Department. The settlement requires Baltimore County to provide $2 million in back pay to Black applicants prevented from joining the department as police cadets or entry-level police officers. The department also must hire on a priority basis up to 20 qualified applicants who faced discrimination and develop new, lawful selection procedures for applicants.

Similarly, we enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal financial assistance from discriminating based on race, color, or national origin. We have used our authority under Title VI to help implement the department’s comprehensive environmental justice strategy, addressing the disproportionate impact of environmental violations on Black and brown communities, including indigenous, and low-income communities. Under Title VI, we opened environmental justice investigations in Lowndes County, Alabama, where people face lack of access to adequate wastewater treatment and sewage removal systems, and we are investigating illegal dumping in Houston, Texas. No one in the United States should be exposed to illness or disease because of the harms that result from environmental racism.

Combating discrimination in student discipline is also a high priority. In September of last year, the Division and the Utah U.S. Attorney’s Office found that the Davis School District improperly subjected Black students to harsher discipline than their white peers for similar behavior. A Black third-grader, for example, received a 10-day suspension for bringing a bottle opener to school while a white fourth grader who brought a knife faced only a conference with administrators. The agreement required the District to revise its policies; train staff; engage students, parents community members to improve school culture and climate; and collect and analyze data. This work is part of our ongoing commitment to fulfilling the goals underlying Brown v. Board of Education and ensuring that all students have access to safe and equitable learning environments in our country.

I mentioned earlier the devastating effects borne by modern day redlining. The Civil Rights Division has responded with a new and unprecedented nationwide initiative to investigate redlining by banks and mortgage lenders. In July, we secured the second-largest redlining settlement ever against Trident Mortgage Company which had denied communities of color in the Philadelphia metropolitan area equal access to residential mortgages, stripped them of the opportunity to build wealth, and devalued properties in their neighborhoods. Right now, Trident is investing more than $20 million to increase credit opportunities in neighborhoods of color in Philadelphia. And this work continues.

With regard to the all-important right to vote, we are working every day to ensure that all eligible voters have voice in our democracy.

We have filed multiple lawsuits to protect voting rights for all Americans:

• In Texas, we sued to stop Senate Bill 1, which impairs the rights of Black and Latino voters to vote absentee and, when they vote in person, to receive help in the voting booth from their assistors of choice.
• We challenged redistricting plans in Galveston County, Texas, that deny Black and Latino voters an equal opportunity to elect candidates of choice.
• And when armed individuals stationed themselves outside of drop-boxes in Arizona during the general election, we stepped in to provide our views to the court on the interpretation and application of Section 11(b) of the Voting Rights Act which prohibits voter intimidation.

Many thousands of Americans fought and died to secure the right to vote. Civil rights leaders and ordinary citizens were attacked, brutalized, even lynched, just for claiming this most basic right. We will not forsake the sacrifices of these heroes. We will not break faith with them by surrendering the progress we have made. We will fight to ensure that every eligible individual can exercise the constitutional right to vote.

America must remain steadfast in our commitment to ensuring equal justice under law for all in our nation. As we mark our 65th anniversary, the Civil Rights Division is seizing this moment to double down on own on our efforts to expand opportunity and justice for all Americans. We know that civil rights enforcement is key to making our country better, our democracy more enduring and our nation more whole and just. Thank you.

Source: United States Department of Justice News

MARTINSBURG, WEST VIRGINIA – Marcellos Carey Edens, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was sentenced today to 18 months of incarceration for an illegal firearms distribution operation, United States Attorney William Ihlenfeld announced.

Edens, also known as “Camo,” 37, pled guilty in September 2020 to one count of “Conspiracy” involving the illegal purchase and transfer of firearms from Berkeley County to Pennsylvania in December 2019. Edens admitted to having others purchase firearms in Berkeley County, West Virginia, and then transport the firearms across state lines to him in Philadelphia.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lara Omps-Botteicher prosecuted the case on behalf of the government. The Bureau for Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives and the Eastern Panhandle Drug & Violent Crimes Task Force, a HIDTA-funded initiative, investigated.

This effort is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) operation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest-level criminal organizations that threaten the United States using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach. Additional information about the OCDETF Program can be found at https://www.justice.gov/OCDETF.

U.S. District Judge Gina M. Groh presided.