New Top Voting Rights Enforcer Sought by DOJ at ‘Critical’ Time

The Justice Department is searching for a new voting enforcement head to replace a retiring longtime official, a significant hire after a favorable US Supreme Court decision that’s created renewed calls for bolder litigation.

The Civil Rights Division posted an opening for a voting section chief on Wednesday. Several advocates said they’ve been told that incumbent T. Christian Herren, who has been in the role for more than a decade, will retire this year.

The upcoming vacancy comes fresh off the Supreme Court’s June 8 decision in Allen v. Milligan that preserved minority voting rights and increased expectations among civil rights organizations for the government to bring more legal challenges against gerrymandered state and local election maps.

“The importance of this candidate search cannot be overstated. This is a critical moment for voting rights enforcement,” said Sophia Lakin, the co-director of the ACLU’s voting rights project. “The Supreme Court just reaffirmed a crucial provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act. The next chief of the voting section will have the responsibility of ensuring the department enforces it to its fullest extent.”

The voting section chief supervises an office that was given greater priority and resources under Attorney General Merrick Garland to combat allegedly biased state election laws and redrawn maps.

While the office’s litigators have been more active in this administration, filing lawsuits against Texas, Georgia, and other jurisdictions, former DOJ attorneys and civil rights advocates have criticized its culture as cautious, sometimes to the point of inaction.

“For far too long the voting section leadership has been lethargic and as a result, private plaintiffs, like the people I represent, have had to shoulder the burden of litigation to enforce voting rights,” said Gerry Hebert, a veteran voting rights attorney and former acting voting section chief. “This is not the time to sit back and be shy and coy. We need to be bold, and as a result of being bold, we can infuse energy into the young lawyers that have been hired since Trump left.”

A DOJ spokeswoman declined to comment.

Defenders say the voting section has been appropriately selective in litigating, a response to a federal judiciary that’s sometimes hostile to its mission.

“We do ourselves no favors by filing lawsuits that ultimately will lead to the constriction of the tools we have for fighting vote dilution,” said Pamela Karlan, a former Civil Rights Division official earlier in the Biden administration who oversaw the voting section, told Bloomberg Law last fall.

The high court’s 5-4 Milligan decision, which rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map in Alabama and required a second majority Black district, could embolden the new voting rights chief to approve lawsuits against states, counties, and cities for drawing racially biased election maps.

At the same time, Civil Rights Division leader Kristen Clarke, a former voting section line attorney, will need to be politically savvy in selecting Herren’s successor, said Jon Greenbaum, chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

“I think the likelihood is that Kristen will go for somebody who is more aggressive,” said Greenbaum, who worked under Clarke at the Lawyers’ Committee. “But it still has to be somebody who is going to be able to effectively work with different administrations.”

Herren has spent 30 years at the voting section.

His exact departure date is unknown. The application deadline is July 12, according to the job posting.