Obama picks firebrand Indian-American lawyer Vanita Gupta as civil rights chief

New York US President Barack Obama’s new pick to run the civil rights division is a passionate advocate for racial justice. Attorney General Eric Holder announced on Wednesday that Obama had nominated firebrand lawyer Vanita Gupta, the deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, to head the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.

Holder praised 39-year-old Gupta’s “trailblazing work” as a civil rights lawyer, and said she “has spent her entire career working to ensure that our nation lives up to its promise of equal justice for all.”

A graduate of Yale and New York University Law School, Gupta, started her career at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, by creating a stir. She jumped into a massive drug case out of Tulia in Texas where 46 African Americans were wrongfully convicted of selling cocaine. She exposed the flimsy evidence and testimony wrought by a racist undercover narcotics officer, Tom Coleman. She was able to reverse the convictions and negotiate a $5 million settlement for the group of men. The case inspired Hollywood to try and make a film on the Indian American civil rights lawyer with Halle Berry playing the lead.

“Talking about her involvement in that case in 2003, Gupta told The New York Times that she wasn’t quite sure where she got her interest in civil rights, but mentioned an experience as a young girl. Her family was sitting in a McDonald’s in London when a group of skinheads walked in. They reportedly yelled “Go home Pakis!” and hurled french fries at Gupta and her family until they fled the restaurant,” Ryan J. Reilly wrote in the Huffington Post.

Gupta has spent the last decade attacking racism in the American criminal justice system. At the ACLU, she led a lawsuit against a Texas immigration detention facility that led to widespread detention policy reform. Gupta has called for the decriminalization of marijuana, criticized the militarization of local police, and gone after erring cops. According to commentators, if Gupta’s job at the ACLU was “policing the police” then as head of the civil rights division, she’ll do that with “the power of the federal government at her back.”

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Strongly supported by the left, liberal activist Gupta has also won unexpected support from conservatives normally critical of the Obama administration.

“Vanita is a very good person,” David Keene, who was president of the National Rifle Association said in an interview to The Washington Post.

“I’ve worked with her on criminal justice reform issues. Most of the Obama administration people have been so ideologically driven that they won’t talk to people who disagree with them. Vanita is someone who works with everyone. She both listens to and works with people from all perspectives to accomplish real good,” added Keene.

Darrel Stephens, a former police chief and the executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, also said he looked forward to working with Gupta.

Gupta, who grew up in the United States, England and France, has worked in positions in policy and social justice, including positions as a community organiser around youth violence prevention at the Harvard School of Public Health.