Another top Justice official quits

Andrew Zajac

Wan Kim, the assistant attorney general for civil rights, turned in his resignation Thursday, effective at the end of the month.

Kim, 39, was not one of the senior Justice officials caught up in the U.S. attorneys firing scandal, but his Federalist Society pedigree put him in step with many of the Bush Administration's top legal appointees, and he oversaw a civil rights division under fire for pursuing what some observers regarded as a politicized agenda.

Under Kim and his predecessors, R. Alexander Acosta and Bradley Schlozman, the civil rights division filed a number of religious discrimination cases critics said were intended as a sop to the Christian evangelical voters assiduously courted by the White House.

In recent years, the division also has signed off on redistricting plans in southern states which some civil rights advocates say would undo gains made by minority voters.

The last few years also saw the departure of a number of senior career attorneys disheartened by the direction the division had taken.

Schlozman acknowledged in congressional testimony earlier this year that he factored political leanings into hiring decisions for career positions when he headed the division in 2005. Schlozman recently left the department.

The division's defenders say that the circumstances of religious and ethnic minorities change and the Justice Department has needed to adjust its legal strategies accordingly.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had this to say in a statement about Kim's pending departure:

Wan J. Kim, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, today announced his resignation, effective at the end of this month. President Bush nominated Mr. Kim to the position on June 16, 2005, and the Senate unanimously confirmed his appointment on November 4, 2005.

Mr. Kim, whose career in the Department of Justice has spanned more than a decade, started in the Department of Justice Honors Program as a trial attorney in the Criminal Division, and later served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of Columbia.

“For over a decade now, Wan Kim has served the Department of Justice and the American people with distinction and honor,” said Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales. “Starting as a young attorney in the Honors Program, Wan has worked his way up through the Department, and I will miss his honest opinions and valuable contributions as an advisor to me.”

During Mr. Kim’s tenure, the Civil Rights Division set record levels of enforcement in a broad range of areas, which included obtaining the highest number of criminal convictions in a single year in the past two decades; filing more than twice the average number of voting rights lawsuits in one year than were filed annually over the past 30 years; and filing as many lawsuits to challenge a pattern or practice of employment discrimination in one year as during the last three years of the previous Administration combined.

Mr. Kim also supervised major initiatives in the areas of human trafficking prosecutions, housing discrimination, religious liberties and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Other notable accomplishments include the reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act in 2006; lawsuits against several financial institutions for discrimination in lending; the investigation and prosecution of cold cases from the Civil Rights Era; and numerous cases to protect the rights of persons in institutional facilities

(Kim photo from Justice Department website.)