The following post appears courtesy of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Fifty years ago today, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sat in the Birmingham City Jail, having been arrested four days earlier for participating in a local civil rights march without a permit.  There in his cell, on scraps of newsprint, he began to draft what became one of the most important documents of the Civil Rights era.

In that famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. King wrote that, “all communities and states” are interrelated.  He declared that “[i]njustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”  And he implored his fellow citizens to move with “a sense of great urgency” to help build the brighter future that everyone in this country deserves.

Dr. King’s letter was a rebuke to those who cautioned civil rights advocates merely to “wait” for their constitutional rights to be protected, rather than standing up and speaking out to help secure those rights.  It served as a resounding call for Americans from all backgrounds and walks of life to continue the march towards equality and opportunity for all.  And it reaffirmed the values that were at the root of Dr. King’s actions and at the core of his life: tolerance, compassion, non-violence – and, above all, justice.

Despite the adversity that surrounded him – and the darkness of his narrow jail cell – Dr. King was confident in our nation’s greatness.  He was proud of what this country had always stood for – and optimistic about what he knew it could become.  That’s why his vision – and his inspiring words – continue to guide our steps forward even today.

For me, and for my colleagues at every level of the U.S. Department of Justice, the fundamental ideal that energized Dr. King – that justice is the right of all – lies at the center of our daily efforts to protect the American people from terrorism and other national security threats – including cowardly acts like the one we witnessed in Boston yesterday afternoon; to combat violent crime; to eradicate financial fraud; to safeguard the most vulnerable members of society; and to uphold the sacred civil rights to which everyone in this country is entitled.  This ideal also shapes our work to reform America’s criminal justice systems – and to ensure that the mechanisms of these systems promote public safety, deterrence, efficiency and fairness.  And it drives our efforts to close the so-called “justice gap” – by working with organizations like the Legal Services Corporation (LSC) to expand access to civil legal aid for those who need it.

This afternoon, I was proud to join Vice President Biden, Valerie Jarrett, LSC leaders, jurists, educators and members of the private bar at the White House in order to discuss the challenges we face in expanding legal assistance.  The unfortunate reality is that – even today – tens of millions of Americans cannot afford the assistance they need to avail themselves of their rights before our court system.  Studies have shown that, for every eligible person seeking help from a legal aid program, another eligible person is turned away.  And, for all the remarkable, once-unimaginable progress we’ve witnessed since Dr. King’s time – more than 80 percent of civil legal needs faced by low-income individuals continue to go unmet.

As Attorney General, I’ve made expanding access to legal services a major focus for the Department of Justice.  Three years ago, I established a new office known as the Access to Justice Initiative to help spearhead national efforts to ensure that basic legal services are available, affordable and accessible for everyone in this country – regardless of status or income.  Last year, in cooperation with the White House Domestic Policy Council – the Justice Department helped launch an interagency roundtable, bringing together 17 agencies to raise awareness about the impact that civil legal aid can have in promoting access to health and housing, education and employment, family stability and community well-being.  The Department’s Office of Justice Programs is providing support for partnerships that educate, train, and equip lawyers to provide civil legal assistance.  Through events like today’s White House forum, and initiatives like the federal government’s Pro Bono Program, we’re encouraging professionals throughout our nation’s legal community to use their skills and training not simply to make a living, but to make a difference.

As we continue these and other efforts, I believe there’s good reason for confidence in our ability to overcome the obstacles before us – and to help realize Dr. King’s vision for a more just society.  I’m optimistic about what we can accomplish – so long as we remain committed to working together.  And I look forward to all that we must, and will, achieve together in the months and years to come.

The following post appears courtesy of Janet Napolitano, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. It originally appeared on the Department of Homeland Security blog.

This morning, I joined Senior Advisor to President Obama Valerie Jarrett and Attorney General Eric Holder at the White House Forum on Combating Human Trafficking where we announced the Administration’s latest effort to combat the hidden crime of human trafficking and help victims of human trafficking. During the forum, we released a draft Federal Strategic Action Plan on Services for Victims of Human Trafficking, which will be open for public comment for 45 days.

Developed collaboratively with federal partners including the Departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor, and with leadership and guidance from the White House, this plan will better coordinate efforts across the federal government to identify, rescue, and support victims. You can view the plan and provide your comments here. When final, the Plan will complement and advance anti-trafficking efforts already underway at DHS.

Nearly three years ago, we launched the DHS Blue Campaign to unite the Department’s effort to combat human trafficking and leverage our relationships with other federal agencies, state, local, tribal and territorial law enforcement, non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and international partners.

Last year alone, we received more tips through the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tip line than ever before, investigated a historic amount of cases and rescued more victims of human trafficking, and provided support to over 1,200 human trafficking victims. We have also expanded our victim assistance program, and will continue to make combating human trafficking a priority.

Working together, we can take comprehensive action to stop this terrible crime, rescue victims, and put perpetrators behind bars. We look forward to receiving your feedback.

To learn more about human trafficking and what you can do, please visit www.dhs.gov/bluecampaign and the Blue Campaign Facebook page.

Today, the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division (@CivilRights) participated in an Equal Pay Twitter Chat.  Hosted by the National Women’s Law Center, the event brought together officials from across the Administration, members of Congress, advocates and community members to recognize National Equal Pay Day, which marks the point in the year when women’s wages catch up to those of men in the previous year.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Jocelyn Samuels joined officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs to discuss equal pay issues. Participants were invited to contribute using the hashtag, “#Talkpay.”

During the chat, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Samuels answered questions about pay discrimination and best practices regarding equal pay enforcement and complaint filings. For example, the department tweeted about the importance of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009, and the need for the passage of the Paycheck Fairness Act:

@CivilRights: Fair Pay Act gives women ability to challenge pay discrimination when it occurs–but Paycheck Fairness Act is a necessary complement.

@CivilRights: Paycheck Fairness enhances the tools women can use to hold employers accountable when paid less than men for substantially equal work.

The Civil Rights Division has worked diligently to ensure that all workers are treated fairly in the workplace and paid equal wages for equal work without regard to sex, race, national origin or other prohibited factors. Within the past year, the Department has filed numerous complaints on behalf of those whose rights were violated by state and local employers under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment practices that discriminate on grounds of race, color, national origin, sex, and religion. In one recent case, the Division and its partners at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reached a settlement with two Texas state agencies to resolve allegations that three female employees were paid significantly less than their male counterparts for performing essentially the same work.   The Department is also part of the National Equal Pay Task Force, which was established by President Barack Obama to crack down on violations of equal pay.

Since the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963 by President Kennedy, women — who make up nearly half of our Nation’s workforce — earn 23 percent less on average than men do. That disparity is even greater for African-American women and Latinas. That is why the first bill signed by President Obama was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which restored to women critical tools to enable them to take action against pay discrimination.

That is why this Administration is calling on Congress to pass the Paycheck Fairness Act.  When women bring home less money than they are owed for the jobs that they do, it means they have less for the everyday needs of their families and, over a lifetime of work, far less in savings for retirement.

Equal Pay Day serves as a reminder for the nation and the Department that we have more to do to ensure economic equality for every employee.   The Department and the Attorney General are committed to that effort.

For more information and resources about equal pay, visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/equal-pay.  | Follow the Civil Rights Division on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/civilrights.

The following post appears courtesy of the Civil Rights Division.

The Civil Rights Division is tasked with enforcement of some of the most important laws enacted by Congress, which aim to fulfill our nation’s promise of equal opportunity and equal justice under the law.  In enforcing these laws, our goal is to be not simply the nation’s civil rights litigator, but also the nation’s civil rights problem-solver.

Among the ways that we can help solve problems is through technical assistance tools that encourage and facilitate voluntary compliance with civil rights requirements.  One such requirement – a requirement that will remain a continuing focus for the Civil Rights Division – is the obligation that state and local court systems provide meaningful access to all of their operations regardless of language ability.  For tens of millions of limited English proficient (LEP) individuals in our nation who may need to interact with state courts, the absence of effective court services and policies can make communication difficult or impossible.  Comprehensive language access programs are therefore a critical undertaking for states that want to ensure meaningful access to LEP individuals, comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and increase public confidence in the justice system while also improving judicial outcomes.

With these interests in mind, the Department of Justice is committed to providing technical assistance tools that will help courts develop – short of formal enforcement efforts – the kinds of programs that provide meaningful access to court operations regardless of language ability.  The Division’s Federal Coordination & Compliance Section has developed a draft Language Access Planning Technical Assistance Tool for Courts.  This tool is based on our experience working with state court systems around the country for more than a decade, and is designed to assist individuals involved in planning and implementing measures to improve access to court proceedings and operations for LEP parties, witnesses and other participants.  The draft tool highlights the importance of assessment and planning and identifies questions for state judges and court staff to consider as they identify challenges and opportunities for improvement. 

We developed this tool in order to respond to the many requests for technical assistance from courts and interested stakeholders.  It draws upon years of experience working with and hearing from courts, attorneys, LEP individuals, advocates and others.  Courts can use this tool to identify those areas that are already well-covered, as well as those that may require more long-term planning and implementation to accomplish. 

We welcome your feedback on this draft technical assistance tool.  Please send your comments and feedback to lep@usdoj.gov and make sure to include “Feedback on LEP Self-Assessment for Courts” in the subject line.  All comments must be submitted by Feb. 15, 2013.

The Civil Rights Division has also prepared additional other technical assistance tools regarding state court language access, accessible online in the State Courts section of the Resources by Subject page of www.LEP.gov.

The following post appears courtesy of Tom Perez, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division

Last week, I had the great honor of visiting the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in Oak Creek, Wis., where I met with leaders of the gurdwara and the families who worship there. It is clear that the hate crime committed on Aug. 5, 2012, when six beloved people were murdered and others injured as they worshipped in the gurdwara, has had an indelible impact on the community of Oak Creek, and far beyond.

Yet it also is clear that although the gurdwara has witnessed the very worst of human kind, its members have reacted with the best of human kind — with courage, compassion and strength.

At a memorial service for the victims of the mass shooting in August, Attorney General Eric Holder said:

“Although we have been brought together by an unspeakable tragedy, we are bound together by far more. We are united . . . not only by a shared sense of loss, but also by a common belief in the healing power of faith, and in the universal principles that are glorified in our nation’s churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, gurdwaras, and other houses of worship; but also by the principles of compassion, kindness, tolerance, inclusion, and love.”

Visiting the gurdwara, the overwhelming message I took back from the congregation is one of unity – a resolve to work together, with members of every faith to foster understanding, and to ensure that such tragic acts of violence are never repeated.

The attack on the Oak Creek gurdwara was a crime driven by hate. Sadly this hate crime does not stand alone, and the Justice Department will continue to combat hate crimes committed against Sikhs and Muslims wherever they occur. For example, last year the Civil Rights Division prosecuted and convicted a man who attacked a Sikh student in Texas because of his turban and beard, and we are currently prosecuting several arson and bomb threat cases against houses of worship.

I attended a town hall meeting hosted by the Justice Department where 22 diverse religious and interfaith groups came together at to discuss how religion-based hate crimes are tracked by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report. There was strong support from these groups for adding anti-Sikh and anti-Hindu, as well as anti-Arab, to the hate crime categories tracked by the Uniform Crime Report. Based on this meeting and the division’s own law enforcement experiences, the division and the Community Relations Service made arecommendation that these categories be added, both to the coding sheets that police fill out and the hate crime reports the FBI produces each year. We believe adding these categories would improve the data about hate crimes that helps inform our enforcement work.

Finally, bullying and harassment of Sikh children remains a serious problem, and schools are not permitted to turn a blind eye: the Division is committed to using the federal civil rights laws to ensure that schools are providing all students with the equal educational opportunities to which they are entitled. I was pleased to have the opportunity to speak with students at the East Oak Creek Middle School during my visit, where I shared the stories of other students the Division has helped and asked the students to speak out about the problems they are facing. Bullying is not a rite of passage, and every student has the right to go to a safe and bully-free school.

We recently marked the anniversary of the birth of Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the first Sikh Guru. In light of the unspeakable violence directed against the Sikh congregation in Oak Creek, President Obama asked that we celebrate the anniversary by “recommit[ting] ourselves to the spirit of pluralism, equality and compassion that define both the Sikh community and our nation.” The Division has the great honor of joining the President and the Attorney General, and all people of good will, in this effort as we continue to enforce laws that move us toward a more tolerant, peaceful, and just society.

Learn more about the Division’s efforts to confront discrimination post-9/11 by downloading our Post-9/11 Civil Rights Summit Report (pdf). For more information about the Division’s hate crime prosecutions, download Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin’s September testimony (pdf), or visit http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/crm/matthewshepard.php.

The following post appears courtesy of Roy L. Austin Jr.,  the Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice

Last week, I attended the Ninth Anniversary of the National Center for Transgender Equality in Washington, D.C., and delivered remarks about the Obama Administration’s commitment to safety and justice for all Americans, including transgender Americans.

LGBT equality has been a top priority of the Obama Administration and Attorney General Eric Holder. As President Barack Obama said in October 2011:

“Every single American – gay, straight, lesbian, bisexual, transgender – every single American deserves to be treated equally in the eyes of the law and in the eyes of our society. It’s a pretty simple proposition.”

The Justice Department has a number of tools at our disposal to meet this important goal. In the Civil Rights Division, one way we do this is by ensuring that law enforcement officials treat everyone equally and are not violating the constitutional rights of the people they serve. The vast majority of police departments around the country work tirelessly to protect the civil and constitutional rights of the communities they serve. But when systematic problems emerge in a police department, the Civil Rights Division uses its statutory authority to hold them accountable, and to galvanize and institutionalize meaningful reform. 

For example, after an investigation of the New Orleans Police Department, the Division found that, among other things, police officers were discriminating against and disproportionately punishing transgender individuals. To address these concerns, the police department will now be specifically trained on working with transgender individuals as part of an agreement we reached with the city of New Orleans in July. Puerto Rico has similar issues with violence and discrimination against LGBT individuals. We are working with the Puerto Rico Police Department to ensure better investigation of these crimes and to ensure that the police department treats victims and witnesses with respect.

We also investigate, address, and work to prevent hate crimes, including those targeting the LGBT community. The Justice Department enforces the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which President Obama signed into law in October 2009.  To date, we have brought 16 cases and charged 40 defendants under the Shepard-Byrd Act in 11 different states across the country. Thirty-six of those defendants have been convicted on a hate crime or a serious hate crime related charge, and five of these cases have involved the convictions of persons who physically attacked others due to their actual or perceived sexual orientation.

Another significant accomplishment to come from the Shepard-Byrd Act has been the Department’s outreach. Since the enactment of Shepard-Byrd, the Department has provided hate crimes training to thousands of law enforcement officers and community activists around the country. We have made it clear what people should do when they believe that they have been a victim of or witness to a hate crime. And we have worked with law enforcement on the ways to properly investigate hate crimes. Among other things, this education spreads the message that our transgender community is a vital part of the American community and must be treated with respect. 

Finally, we have led efforts to address the bullying and harassment that touches the lives of countless kids, their families, and their communities every school year. As we’ve seen all too clearly – and as many of us know from our own experience – bullying can have a devastating, and potentially lifelong, impact. Nearly one in three middle and high school students report being bullied, and over half of our children report that they witness bullying in school. For gender non-conforming and transgender students, it can be much worse.

The Administration takes this issue very seriously. Last year at the White House, the President and the First Lady held a conference on bullying and harassment in schools. The President has made clear that he doesn’t accept the idea that bullying is just part of growing up; rather, every child has a right to receive an education without fearing for their safety. 

The Civil Rights Division is using every tool available to us to respond. We protect the rights of students who are being harassed because of their race, national origin, religion, disability, or sex – including if they are being harassed because they don’t act how their peers think a boy or girl is supposed to act.  Through this work we are seeing that two communities face a disproportionate amount of bullying and harassment in schools: Muslim students, and LGBT students.  And not only members of these communities—but also those who are perceived to belong to these communities—are at increased risk of being bullied. 

Together with our federal partners like the Department of Education, we are exploring ways to hold schools accountable, and to stop harassment and bullying before it starts. This includes efforts in Tehachapi, California, where 13-year-old Seth Walsh, who was openly gay, took his own life after suffering verbal, physical and sexual harassment in school for over two years. Although the settlement we reached with the school district comes too late to help Seth, it hopefully will prevent harassment and bullying from recurring and create a more positive environment for all students in his district, as well as send a message nationwide.

All of these actions and policies are certainly promising steps in the right direction, but we also recognize there is still much work to be done. The Justice Department remains committed to equality under the law and will continue to be central to that effort over the years to come.