Obama administration accused of racial bias

Reporting from Washington —  The incident occurred more than a year and a half ago at a polling place in Philadelphia.

“Minister King” Samir Shabazz, a leader in the New Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was out front in a military-style uniform, wielding a nightstick. Jerry Jackson, a city-certified poll watcher who lived in the apartment building where voting was underway, also was in uniform and had joined Shabazz at the door. Together the two African Americans allegedly were “making intimidating statements and gestures to various individuals,” according to the Justice Department.

But were they violating anyone’s right to vote in the presidential election that November 2008?

The Justice Department, in the waning days of the Bush administration, filed a civil suit against the two men and the party, seeking injunctions prohibiting any such behavior in future elections. But the Obama Justice Department dropped proceedings against Jackson and the party after obtaining an injunction against Shabazz.

Conservatives maintain the case demonstrates that the Obama administration is interested in prosecuting only whites for racial activity. One prosecutor in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division abruptly resigned over what he calls Obama’s “lawless hostility toward equal enforcement of the law.”

But J. Gerald Hebert, who served 21 years as a senior voting rights prosecutor and supervisor at the Justice Department, noted that the polling place was in an African American neighborhood in Philadelphia — so where was the racial component?

“You have to prove some kind of injury to somebody,” Hebert said in an interview. “And they didn’t station people at every polling booth in Philadelphia. They didn’t block people from voting.”

Nevertheless, the issue has become a point of focus for conservatives and a subject of investigations by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility and by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. When combined with the case of Shirley Sherrod, a black Agriculture Department worker in Georgia who was fired after being accused of reverse discrimination, it constitutes a shifting of traditional notions of victimhood and has inflamed perceptions among some whites that a black president is out to get them.

The federal government has seldom been confronted with the issue. In the last three decades, it has filed only three cases of alleged voter intimidation based on racial hatred. Indeed, in the 45 years since Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, fewer than 10 similar cases have even been brought to their attention.

A case similar to the Philadelphia problem was considered in 2006 when three white, anti-immigrant activists with the Minutemen organization showed up at a polling spot in Tucson. One was armed with a 9-millimeter Glock automatic on his side. He also carried a camera and clipboard — all allegedly to scare off Latino voters.

But the Justice Department reviewed the case and declined to take action because, as in Philadelphia, no one was prevented from voting.

Republican lawmakers and conservative activists remain incensed that the Obama administration dropped the proceedings in Philadelphia.

But Justice officials say that because no one was prevented from voting, they are satisfied with the single court injunction. As Assistant Atty. Gen. Thomas E. Perez, who heads the Civil Rights Division, testified in December before a House Judiciary subcommittee: “The maximum penalty available under the relevant provision of the Voting Rights Act is injunctive relief, and that was the penalty that was obtained.”

Abigail Thernstrom, a conservative who is vice chairwoman of the civil rights panel, wrote in a National Review Online article this month that the New Black Panther Party is “a lunatic fringe group that is clearly into racial theater of minor importance. It may dream of a large-scale effort to suppress voting.…But the Panthers have not realized their dream even on a small scale.

“Forget about the New Black Panther Party case,” she added. “It is very small potatoes.”

(Though not affiliated with the militant Black Panther Party of the 1960s, the small organization is considered a black supremacist outfit.)

Other conservatives, however, are not letting go, and the matter continues to be inflamed by Fox News, which repeatedly has aired video of a separate New Black Panther Party incident in which a member in uniform urges the death of white babies he calls “crackers.”

Leading the effort on Capitol Hill is Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee. “Refusal to address these concerns only confirms politicization of the issue and does not reflect well on the Justice Department,” he said in a letter to Justice officials in July 2009.

This month, J. Christian Adams, the prosecutor who resigned when the Philadelphia charges were dropped, told the civil rights panel that he disagreed with Thernstrom’s statement that the incident was “very small potatoes.” A voting rights intimidation case can have just one defendant, Adams said. “It doesn’t matter. If you break the law, you break the law.”

That prompted Tracy Schmaler, a Justice spokeswoman, to fire back at Adams. “It is regrettable when a former department attorney distorts the facts and makes baseless allegations to promote his or her agenda,” she said in a written statement.

richard.serrano@latimes.com