Judge Rejects Appointee to Civil Rights Agency

A federal judge Monday rejected the Bush administration’s most recent appointment to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, backing the agency’s majority against the White House in an increasingly partisan fight over the agency’s role and direction.

In a 20-minute oral ruling, U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said there was no place on the commission for Peter Kirsanow, a conservative Cleveland lawyer whom Bush named in December, because the term of commissioner Victoria Wilson, an independent who often sympathized with the panel’s Democrats, had not expired.

Wilson was appointed in January 2000 by President Clinton to replace a deceased commission member. In Monday’s ruling, Kessler found that Wilson had the right to serve a full six-year term even though her letter of commission expired Nov. 29, 2001.

The Justice Department immediately promised to appeal the decision, which would add another round to a political scrimmage that has reached beyond an appointment to a $9-million federal agency that investigates complaints and issues reports but has no enforcement powers.

The eight-member commission is at a 5-3 tilt that favors liberals and chairwoman Mary Frances Berry. Kirsanow’s appointment would put the commission at a 4-4 split. Beyond the issue of the panel’s composition are disputes over its role. Conservatives believe it should be more of an academic data-collection agency; liberals say it should keep looking into complaints of civil rights abuses.

Berry, long a critic of Republican administrations, was sharply critical of Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s younger brother, for his role in that state’s presidential balloting in 2000.

Monday, Kessler said her ruling was based on the “plain language” of the 1994 Civil Rights Act, which reads that “the term of each [commission] member shall be six years.” A 1983 version of the law had provided for interim and temporary appointments. But when the House Judiciary Committee struck that language from the 1994 statute, Kessler said, it signaled that those provisions no longer existed.

“On the basis of the first and foremost principle, the text shows that commissioners are to serve six-year terms,” Kessler said.