Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call via Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — A group of 1,140 faculty members from law schools around the country has penned a letter opposing Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions, citing questions that have been raised about his civil rights record.
The letter, addressed to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) — the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee respectively– took aim at controversy surrounding Sessions’ 1986 confirmation hearing for a federal judgeship.
“In 1986, the Republican-controlled Senate Judiciary Committee, in a bipartisan vote, rejected President Ronald Reagan’s nomination of then-U.S. Attorney Sessions for a federal judgeship, due to statements Sessions had made that reflected prejudice against African Americans,” the letter says. “Nothing in Senator Sessions’ public life since 1986 has convinced us that he is a different man than the 39-year-old attorney who was deemed too racially insensitive to be a federal district court judge.”
Sessions said under oath during the hearing that the allegations against him were false and that he was not biased.
The note also says some of the lawyers, from 171 law schools, have issues with Sessions’ policy positions, including his support for a wall along the southern border with Mexico, support for what they call “regressive drug policies” and opposition to efforts to block legal protections for the LGBT community.
“All of us believe it is unacceptable for someone with Senator Sessions’ record to lead the Department of Justice,” the letter states.
The letter comes as the Alabama chapter of the NAACP has been protesting Sessions’ nomination, staging a sit-in as Sessions’ Alabama congressional office.
“As a matter of conscience and conviction, we can neither be mute nor mumble our opposition to Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions becoming Attorney General of the United States,” NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said in a statement.
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