Given the failure of the Attorney General to follow up on the illegal politicization of attorney hiring at the Justice Dept (which included the odd statement for an Attorney General that "'not every wrong, or even every violation of the law, is a crime"), the lawyers who were blackballed for such horrid crimes as having a Democrat for a wife, or for being rumored to be a Lesbian, are suing.
Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.
[...] One of the rejected attorneys -- Sean Gerlich -- first filed suit against the department in June. Today's amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, broadens the suit to include Gonzales; Monica Goodling, former White House Liaison; Michael Elston, former chief of staff to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; and Esther McDonald, former counsel to Gonzales.
In it, the attorneys allege that top officials violated the applicants' privacy and due process through the politicized hiring process in the Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program.
The suit alleges that in vetting candidates' political affiliations -- in part by Googling their names in connection with any political activity -- the officials violated privacy rules requiring that applicants' files maintain no additional information about the individuals' political activity. The department's failure to fully address this "reveal defendant Department of Justice's utterly unredeemable obliviousness to its legal obligations, and its remarkably recidivistic failures to meet them, in the first place," the complaint states.
The suit also argues that a wholesale shift in taking political ideology into account in hiring for the civil service positions violated the applicants' constitutional rights. "This was an extraordinary, and uniquely successful, conspiracy to achieve political results that required the gross deprivation of hundreds of individuals' constitutional rights...for which defendant Gonzales was legally most responsible," the complaint states
I wonder if the Bush Administration will try to invoke Executive Privilege to get the suit dismissed. They seem to use it for everything else.
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