Justice Department and Civil Rights

The NAACP has appointed Kristen Clarke, who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division from 2021 to 2024, as its next general counsel, putting a former top federal civil-rights enforcer in charge of the group’s legal strategy. Announced March 25, Clarke’s role will include overseeing litigation on voter access, gerrymandering, First Amendment disputes and other civil-rights and social-justice issues as the organization pledges to deploy greater “legal firepower” against Republican-backed efforts to roll back voting protections. The move comes as the NAACP is already suing over President Donald Trump’s executive order requiring proof of citizenship for voter registration, which a federal judge blocked in June as unconstitutional and discriminatory against voters of color. Clarke, the first woman and first Black woman to head DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, previously pursued police-department reforms after the 2023 killing of Tyre Nichols and helped prosecute the white supremacist who murdered 10 Black shoppers in Buffalo in 2022. She will continue teaching at Howard University School of Law, while NAACP President Derrick Johnson is framing her hire as a strategic escalation in nationwide fights over voting rights and civil-rights enforcement.