A top impeachment witness for House Democrats is quietly emerging as an integral figure in President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.
Pamela Karlan’s spirited testimony made waves during the first impeachment of former president Donald Trump. Now the number-two official in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, Karlan has helped formulate the department’s response to schoolhouse controversies involving LGBT rights and voting reforms in red states.
Karlan’s profile has been eclipsed by her superiors and their hotly contested confirmations. Once favored by progressives for the Supreme Court, Karlan has admitted that her leftwing commitments and snarky personal style probably foreclosed a judicial career. But those characteristics made her ideal for a moment when progressives are looking to Biden’s Justice Department as a redoubt against a conservative Supreme Court and alleged attacks on the franchise.
“Pam Karlan is one of the great civil rights lawyers of our time,” University of Virginia law professor George Rutherglen told the Washington Free Beacon. “As an advocate and as a scholar, she takes daring and original positions and backs them up with sound argument and an encyclopedic knowledge of the law. She was a great addition to the University of Virginia when she was here and she is a great addition to the Biden Department of Justice now.”
Karlan notched an early victory in March when she circulated a three-page memo to federal officials on Title IX, the federal civil rights in education law. The memo is the linchpin of a new regulatory regime that will likely allow transgender students to participate in women’s sports and access their preferred bathroom facilities. – READ MORE
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