A Lawless Labor Agenda
In prior posts (here and here), I looked at the pro-union agenda of the Obama administration’s National Labor Relations Board, and the anti-employer policies undertaken by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and Department of Labor. The leadership of the Department by Thomas Perez deserves a closer look, for Secretary Perez has brazenly promoted the objectives of organized labor at the expense of the rule of law.
This is about what was expected of Perez, who, as head of the Civil Rights Division of Eric Holder’s Justice Department, oversaw—among other things—the dismissal of charges of voter intimidation by the militant New Black Panther Party.
While at Justice, this longtime advocate of “disparate impact” theory (treating random statistical imbalances the same as intentional discrimination) also worked behind the scenes to induce the city of St. Paul, Minnesota to drop an appeal pending before the U.S. Supreme Court in a Fair Housing Act case because Perez feared (incorrectly, it turns out) that the Court would rule that disparate impact did not apply in such cases. In exchange, Perez secured the agreement of Justice officials not to intervene in a pending whistleblower case against St. Paul under the False Claims Act. Controversy regarding this sordid quid pro quo did not prevent him from being confirmed in 2013 as Hilda Solis’ successor as Secretary of Labor—although the House Oversight Committee concluded that Perez “manipulated justice and ignored the rule of law.”
Read More at Law & Liberty
