Trump appoints expert on defending racial gerrymanders as senior civil rights official
/One of the very first appointments President Trump announced shortly after his victorious second-place finish in the 2016 election was Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) to lead the Department of Justice. Sessions, who was denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s due to concerns that he is too racist, once prosecuted a former aide to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after that aide helped African Americans cast a ballot.
A second appointment, revealed shortly before Trump’s inauguration, suggests that the Sessions nomination is not a fluke.
John Gore, who Trump appointed as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, is not a civil rights lawyer. Until recently, he was a partner at Jones Day, a large law firm employing many prominent Republican lawyers, where he litigated business cases ranging from antitrust to product liability.
Gore, has, however, worked on some civil rights-related issues — on the side of people who were accused of violating civil rights laws — including several cases alleging illegal racial gerrymanders.
Among other things, Gore was one of the lawyers who defended North Carolina’s HB2, the so-called “bathroom bill” that locked transgender individuals out of public restrooms that corresponded with their gender identity. The backlash against HB2 is widely viewed as a major reason why former Gov. Pat McCrory (R-NC) lost his reelection bid last November. [MORE]
