EDITORIAL: Racialist Justice

OPINION:

By now, the default judgment about the Barack Obama-Eric H. Holder Jr. Justice Department is that it discriminates intentionally on the basis of race. By the precise definition used in the American Heritage dictionary, the department is racialist.

The Justice Department hasn’t seriously contested the accusation of racialism. Recently resigned whistleblowing attorney J. Christian Adams has made credible charges, backed by at least five former colleagues, that the department’s Civil Rights Division has adopted a policy of refusing to enforce civil rights laws on behalf of whites victimized by minority perpetrators. Mr. Adams cited an incident from November in which Deputy Assistant Attorney General Julie Fernandes openly stated it was departmental policy not to enforce parts of the federal motor-voter law that involve cleaning up dead and ineligible voters from poll registries. Another former department attorney, Nicole S. Marrone, has written that Ms. Fernandes previously discussed that law in explicitly racial terms.

To such a specific allegation of lawlessness, the Justice Department’s response has been dead silence. No specific denial of the accusation. No statement that the department would not tolerate such lawlessness. No investigation. And when The Washington Times asked directly on Monday about the Fernandes statement, Justice spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler responded with boilerplate that neither affirmed nor denied the statement.

As in the voter-intimidation case against members of the New Black Panther Party - a case developed by Mr. Adams but dropped by the Obama-Holder crew - a failure to contest a charge is to be taken as an admission of the charge. It leads to a default judgment.

Now Mr. Adams says the Justice Department failed Monday to take a simple step that would have disallowed a proposed voting change that was intended to disenfranchise white voters in Noxubee County, Miss. Instead, the department made a flurry of court filings Mr. Adams characterizes as “a strategic feint that allows it to avoid the core issue of equal enforcement” and that is “the most contorted, most expensive way possible to [protect voters.] … [T]he real motive is to avoid expanding Section 5 to protect a white or Asian victimized minority.”

The controversy originated from a case in which Noxubee County Democratic leader Ike Brown canceled ballots cast by white voters. “He stuffed the ballot box with illegal ballots supporting his preferred black candidates,” Mr. Adams explained. “He deployed teams of notaries to roam the countryside and mark absentee ballots instead of voters. He allowed forced assistance in the voting booth, to the detriment of white voters. He threatened 174 white voters.”

Mr. Brown spearheaded a request for a voting-practice change to approve the same practices - under cover of law - that he previously had done illegally. The Justice Department did not object. Instead, it issued a “no determination” letter that, according to Mr. Adams, effectively leaves the issue open for another day.

The Black Panther and Mississippi cases are hardly isolated instances. In North Carolina (voting), Texas (race-based admissions) and Connecticut (race-based promotions of firefighters), the Obama-Holder Justice Department advocated racial preferences or results predicated by race. Department officials reportedly have espoused biases in favor of minorities in open meetings.

Mr. Holder called America a “nation of cowards” on racial issues and has said black solidarity should bind black prosecutors and criminals together. These are not signs of equal justice. They are signs of a racial spoils system that’s lawless and dangerous.