Holder: 'Standard is too high' in federal civil rights cases

[Geee]

Washington Examiner:

Attorney General Eric Holder is set to push for a lower bar in federal civil rights cases before he leaves his post.

 

Specifically, Holder plans to call on Congress to lower the standard of proof in civil rights cases — which will in turn open the door for federal prosectors to succeed in getting a conviction in situations where local authorities are unable or unwilling to get one.

 

"There is a better way in which we could have federal involvement in these kinds of matters to allow the federal government to be a better backstop in examining these cases," Holder said in an NBC News interview Thursday.

 

The news comes on the heels of the Justice Department's Tuesday announcement that it would not be pursuing federal criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman in the 2012 shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin.

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This is a VERY bad idea.

[Geee]

Holder Already Lowered 'Standard Of Proof' In Civil Rights Probes

 

Racial Politics: Attorney General Eric Holder complains that the U.S. needs a "lower standard of proof" to enforce civil-rights laws. Standards have already sunk under his "disparate impact" witch hunt. How low is enough?

 

In an exit interview with Politico.com, the outgoing AG asserted, "Some serious consideration needs to be given to the standard of proof that has to be met" to prosecute racism.

 

Yet no other Justice Department has been more aggressive or taken more liberties in enforcing discrimination statutes. Holder's agency was the first to use "disparate impact" to prosecute the financial industry for lending bias.

 

His lawyers couldn't prove that lenders intentionally discriminated against minority borrowers, so they used data showing "disparities" in loan outcomes for some minorities — though the stats were raw and meaningless. They never controlled for mitigating factors like bad credit, high debt or low down payments.

 

So banks were sued for discrimination for no other reason than their "numbers" were not to Holder's liking.

 

His former colleagues say that his department was the first to apply the ridiculously low "disparate impact" standard to banks. Previous administrations opposed disparate treatment but never tried to make bias cases based on data that merely show different behavior by different groups yielding different results.

 

Doing so is unconstitutional, and we expect the Supreme Court to strike down abusive use of disparate impact in a landmark housing case now before the bench.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/030215-741566-holder-lowered-standard-of-proof-in-civil-rights-probes.htm