Kristen Clarke, the lawyer who served as assistant attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division during President Joe Biden's administration, has been appointed as general counsel for the NAACP, the organization said on Wednesday. The NAACP framed the hire as part of an effort to bolster what it called its "legal firepower" in response to intensifying challenges to civil rights.
Clarke holds the distinction of being the first woman and the first Black woman to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate as assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division. Her tenure at the department included civil rights litigation and negotiation of consent decrees intended to reform police practices after federal investigations concluded there had been abuses.
The NAACP highlighted a series of legal actions it pursued over the past year, including challenges to newly drawn electoral maps in North Carolina and Texas that the group contends were drawn to increase Republican representation in the U.S. House of Representatives. The organization also filed a lawsuit alleging that Virginia state election officials disenfranchised students.
In a statement released by the NAACP, its president and chief executive officer, Derrick Johnson, said, "Kristen Clarke is exactly the legal mind this moment demands." The organization presented Clarke's hiring as a strategic reinforcement of its capacity to litigate on issues ranging from voting to policing.
Clarke herself said in the NAACP release, "Our communities are under relentless attack - from the ballot box to their wallets - and this moment demands that we use the full weight of the law to promote justice and accountability."
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division has seen shifts in focus tied to changes in presidential administrations. The unit was led, during Republican President Donald Trump’s second term, by Harmeet Dhillon. Under that leadership, the division pursued conservative priorities including gun rights and policies pushing back on transgender issues, and it withdrew from pending agreements with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments related to widespread civil rights abuses, rescinding prior findings of police abuse.
By contrast, while Clarke led the Civil Rights Division under President Biden, the department challenged voting restrictions in states such as Arizona and Georgia and negotiated consent decrees with Minneapolis and Louisville to implement police reforms following federal investigations into civil rights violations.
Separately, Reuters reported last month that the unit within the Civil Rights Division responsible for prosecuting potential wrongdoing by law enforcement - including actions during a crackdown on illegal immigration in Minneapolis - had lost two-thirds of its prosecutors and was operating under directives to scale back investigations of excessive force.