Three months into his new job, judge-turned-attorney general Merrick Garland, who inherited a demoralized and politicized Justice Department, is facing criticism from some Democrats that he is not doing enough to quickly expunge Trump-era policies and practices.

On a host of issues ranging from leak investigations to civil and criminal cases involving former president Donald Trump, Garland has been beset by a growing chorus of congressional second-guessers, even as he insists he is scrupulously adhering to the principles of equal justice under the law.

How he charts his way through the current controversies and still-unresolved politically sensitive cases is likely to determine how much of a long-term impact the Trump presidency has on the Justice Department.

“It’s a difficult situation to navigate. The Department of Justice is an institution like an ocean liner — it doesn’t turn around easily,” said Ronald Weich, who served as an assistant attorney general in the early days of the Obama administration.

Within that big ship, there are thousands of career prosecutors and lawyers toiling away on a host of cases that have political implications. During the Trump era, current and former Justice Department lawyers decried what they saw as the politicization of legal decisions.
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“It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s not going to happen in bulk,” said Weich, now the dean of the law school at the University of Baltimore. “Judge Garland is a very careful lawyer, and he is going to proceed very carefully.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/merrick-garland-doj-trump-legacy/2021/06/20/d83e1fd0-d05e-11eb-a7f1-52b8870bef7c_story.html

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland on Wednesday reversed a Trump-era immigration ruling that made it all but impossible for people to seek asylum in the United States over credible fears of domestic abuse or gang violence, marking one of the Justice Department’s most significant breaks with the previous administration.

Mr. Garland vacated a decision made in 2018 by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions that had argued that asylum claims had incorrectly expanded to include victims of “private violence,” like domestic violence or gangs.

People fleeing persecution on account of their membership in a “particular social group” can seek asylum in the United States, and previous administrations have considered those fleeing domestic abuse and gang violence to fall under that definition. In vacating the Trump administration’s stance, Mr. Garland said that the Justice Department should follow the earlier precedent.

His decision came in a closely watched case known as A-B for the initials of the woman seeking asylum. The department’s Board of Immigration Appeals found in 2016 that she was part of a particular social group, saying that the government of El Salvador does little to protect people in violent relationships. That assessment qualified the woman for asylum, but Mr. Sessions overruled the appeals board.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/politics/justice-dept-asylum-gangs-domestic-abuse.html

Title IX Protections Extend to Transgender Students, Education Dept. Says

A year after the Supreme Court ruled that protections in the Civil Rights Act against discrimination in the workplace extended to gay and transgender people, the Education Department plans to say on Wednesday that it has interpreted the ruling to mean that those protections also extend to students.

The department will say that discrimination against gay and transgender students is prohibited under Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in federally funded schools. The law has become a political cudgel in the culture wars over sex and education.

“We just want to double down on our expectations,” Miguel A. Cardona, the education secretary, said in an interview. “Students cannot be discriminated against because of their sexual orientation or their gender identity.”

The Education Department’s interpretation of Title IX is the opposite of the stance taken by the Trump administration, which maintained that transgender students were not entitled to protections and threatened last year to withhold federal aid from schools that allowed transgender athletes to participate in scholastic sports. During the last weeks of the Trump administration, the Education Department issued guidance saying that the Supreme Court ruling did not offer transgender students protections.

Since Inauguration Day, the Biden administration has conducted a sweeping effort to rescind, revise or revoke a number of Trump-era policies that rolled back transgender rights. The Department of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services have all issued guidance affirming the rights of transgender Americans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/16/us/politics/title-ix-transgender-students.html?smid=url-share