by Hazel Trice Edney
NNPA News Service

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – Elena Kagan – President Barack Obama’s choice for the U.S. Supreme Court – now has the unanimous endorsement of the NAACP, while others are withholding their support pending more scrutiny.

President Obama introduces Elena Kagan, the current Solicitor General, as his nominee to replace retiring Justice John Paul Stevens on the Supreme Court. (White House photo by Lawrence Jackson)

“After a careful and thorough review of Elena Kagan’s record, we have unanimously voted to endorse her nomination,” President and CEO Benjamin Todd Jealous said in statement released Saturday after the NAACP’s quarterly board meeting.

 “Elena Kagan has demonstrated a commitment to civil rights and equal justice under the law throughout her career…. We look forward to actively supporting her nomination,” Jealous said.

NAACP Chair Roslyn Brock called Kagan a unifier.

“She is skilled at forging legal consensus on contentious issues,” Brock said in her released statement. “Civil rights is a bipartisan issue. It is central to the core of our American values. We believe Elena Kagan has the ability to use her fine legal mind, her commitment to diversity and her ability to build bridges to effectively advocate in the Court for the civil rights and democracy enshrined in our Constitution.”

The NAACP’s endorsement notwithstanding, Solicitor General Kagan’s civil rights credentials have been intensely questioned by other high-profile organizations. That includes the National Bar Association, which has decided to withhold judgment pending more scrutiny of Kagan’s record.

The NBA represents 44,000 lawyers, judges, law professors and law students in 80 affiliate chapters in the U. S. and around the world. In a letter to President Obama, the NBA had asked him to consider Ann Claire Williams, the first African American appointed to the Seventh Circuit and the third African-American woman ever to serve on any United States Court of Appeals.

“We hope to support the president with this nomination and want to know more about the nominee’s sensitivity to issues of race, gender, class discrimination and to affording equal opportunity to all segments of our society,” said NBA President Mavis T. Thompson in a statement.

The Black Women’s Roundtable, headed by Melanie Campbell, president and CEO of the National Coalition of Black Civic Participation, had also asked Obama to appoint an African-American female to the court. In a letter, Campbell and 27 women also expressed concern that Kagan’s civil rights record is not well established.

Meanwile, Wade Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said the LCCR is awaiting decisions from more of its 200-plus members before it announces a formal endorsement.

John Payton, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund has called for the expeditious scrutiny of Kagan by the U.S. Senate.

 “As Solicitor General, Ms. Kagan has an exemplary record on most issues important to us. At the same time, we are interested in learning more about her entire civil rights record,” said Payton.

NAACP board members said they made their decision based on the Kagan records that they have been able to research.

According to an NAACP announcement, their review included:

• Kagan’s recent authorization for the Department of Justice and the Department of Civil Rights to file an amicus brief supporting the constitutionality of the University of Texas’ affirmative action program in Fisher v. University of Texas;

• Her brief in support of African American firefighters who challenged a hiring test used by the City of Chicago under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (Lewis v. City of Chicago).”

 “It is no accident that during her tenure as dean of the Harvard Law School, the percentage of African American students rose from 9.3 percent to 11.6 percent,” said Jealous.

“The percentage of Hispanics in the entering class was 6.4 percent, while it had been 4.6 percent prior to her becoming dean. The number of African American students admitted, particularly black men – given the national decline in African American males in colleges and universities – is impressive. Her record demonstrates a legal scholar who clearly values the precept of equal opportunity as a right that is protected by our constitution.”

(Hazel Trice Edney is NNPA editor-in-chief.)