President Obama’s Attorney General nominee Loretta Lynch said that voter ID laws are meant to reverse Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s accomplishments and promised that DOJ lawsuits against “Deep South” states with voter ID laws will continue.
Lynch was nominated two days after President Obama’s post-midterm election White House meeting with Al Sharpton, who previously revealed that he was working with the White House on choosing Holder’s replacement. Lynch was a U.S. Attorney in Brooklyn and prosecutor on the Abner Louima assault case against New York police officers. Lynch met with Sharpton and the wife of a man allegedly brutalized by police officers, in her Brooklyn office on August 21. (RELATED: Did Al Sharpton Just Pick The Next Attorney General?)
In a speech in Long Beach, New York captured on video about nine months ago, Lynch stated that voter ID laws are intended to “take back” what Dr. King fought for, and vowed that DOJ lawsuits against “Deep South” states will continue.
“50 years after the march on Washington, 50 years after the civil rights movement, we stand in this country at a time when we see people trying to take back so much of what Dr. King fought for,” Lynch told the crowd. “We stand in this country. People try and take over the State House and reverse the goals that have been made in voting in this country.”
“But I’m proud to tell you that the Department of Justice has looked at these laws and looked at what’s happening in the Deep South, and in my home state of North Carolina has brought lawsuits against those voting rights changes that seek to limit out ability to stand up and exercise our rights as citizens. And those lawsuits will continue.”
“But we also know that when we sit and look at schools that have zero-tolerance programs, they are often used. And they take our babies, minority children, black children, Hispanic children, and they put them out of school before they have a chance to learn. So the Department of Justice this past year has gone into the South, although we’re looking further, and brought the first school-to-prison pipeline cases against school districts in Alabama.”