Civil Rights Advocate

The ACLU was not displeased to see the House take no action on a Senate bill to establish a “civil rights advocate” in the Attorney General’s office. The ACLU had objected that the bill seemed to be more of a public relations effort than a sincere desire for civil rights advocacy in the AG’s office. Except for prosecuting hate crimes, none of the advocate’s responsibilities were spelled out in the legislation, and the AG had rejected requests to amend the bill to explicitly give the advocate similar duties and responsibilities to those that other statutorily-created advocates in his office have.