An “empty gesture” — that is the term that Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Democrat from New York, used to describe H.R. 5698, the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, which creates a new federal crime for targeting law enforcement officers.

“There is no profession more widely protected under federal and state law than working in law enforcement,” Nadler continued as the U.S. House Judiciary Committee considered the bill last week on the eve of Police Week. Protect and Serve, he said, is a “one-sided approach that presents the strong risk of creating a perception of bias against community-based policing concerns.”

So how did this bill pass the U.S. House of Representatives this week by a vote of 382 to 35? And how did it pass with the support of some of its critics in Congress?

The only explanation is that elected officials are intimidated by the police in the same way that many communities and people throughout this country are scared of the police. Police departments and unions wield a tremendous amount of power, so it’s a constituency that few members of Congress are brave enough to go against, especially when “law and order” rules the day.   

But just how tone deaf is Congress?

There is a national conversation right now about the approximately 1,000 fatal police shootings every year. And there is a discussion about Black people and other people of color being policed for living their everyday lives. This disconnect between federal lawmakers and these constituents is evidenced by the Senate’s version of the Protect and Serve Act of 2018, S. 2794, which also creates a new federal crime for targeting law enforcement, with an important distinction. It essentially makes that offense a hate crime and law enforcement a protected class for hate crimes purposes.

The ACLU and more than 40 coalition partners oppose this legislation.    

Giving hate crimes protections to police is “profoundly inappropriate” as “hate crimes laws are intended to extend protection to historically persecuted groups,” the ACLU and coalition partners explain in our letter of opposition to S. 2794.  Hate crime laws were enacted to address the experiences of people who have lived through a history of systemic discrimination based on a personal characteristic, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, and disability. 

Law enforcement, however, is not a historically persecuted group. As Radley Balko puts it, police officers “are about as far removed from a vulnerable group as one can imagine.” 

The idea of making law enforcement a protected class for hate crimes purposes is deeply troubling, but the problems with the Senate bill don’t stop there. The bill will criminalize all types of interactions with law enforcement that cause — or attempt to cause — bodily injury. As Balko explains: 

“[T]hink about a demonstration where police push into a protest line, resulting in pushing and shoving. It would now get pretty easy to start handing out assault charges against the protestors. A politically ambitious U.S. attorney who wants to, say, shut down Black Lives Matter could get a lot of mileage out of this bill.”

And it seems Congress wants to get a lot of mileage out of these “empty gestures” during Police Week. This time last year, the House passed another empty gesture bill, the Thin Blue Line Act, which duplicated existing law that imposes the death penalty for crimes committed against law enforcement, which the ACLU opposed. Last May, the House also passed the Probation Officer Protection Act, which the ACLU also objected to given its expansion of police powers and arrest authority for federal probation officers. 

Congress has got to stop advancing these police union bills with no questions asked while police reform efforts go nowhere. In 2016, the bipartisan, U.S. House Working Group on Policing Strategies was formed because as they put it “our nation’s conscience has been rocked by a series of tragic events that has resulted in the loss of too many lives.” The working group acknowledged that “more must be done to end excessive force” and “strengthen police accountability.” 

Almost two years later, the working group has not advanced a single piece of meaningful police reform legislation, of which there is no shortage. Many of these very same members supported the Protect and Serve Act. The working group has not even offered the Law Enforcement Trust and Integrity Act, a long-promised bipartisan bill of interest to both advocates and law enforcement. The working group has been called out but to no avail. 

So again, here we are, another Police Week, and the only nod to improving the relationship between police and community from Congress was a House resolution that passed Tuesday night. The nonbinding resolution, H. R. 285, expressed that “Congress and the President should empower the creation of police and community alliances designed to enhance and improve communication and collaboration between members of the law enforcement community and the public they serve.” 

 In the hierarchy of empty gestures, this has to rank near the top. 

It’s been 64 years this week since Brown v. Board Of Education began charting a new course for public schools and race in America. In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court struck down the dishonest doctrine of “separate but equal” and exposed the white supremacy that lay beneath it. 

Yet, the celebration this year is muted by a fresh sense of uncertainty. The sanctity of the landmark decision that helped ensure Black children’s full and equal access to participation in American society is increasingly under attack in the courts, in government, and in the private sphere. 

Although there has always been some level of disagreement about what Brown means and exactly what it requires, its vital importance in American jurisprudence has been firm. Even President Dwight D. Eisenhower, an incrementalist and certainly a racist by today’s standards, eventually admitted of the decision: “… there can be no question that the judgment of the court was right.” 

Indeed, Brown has for decades been given its due respect by people on all sides of the aisle — until now. Wendy Vitter, nominee for the United States District Court in Louisiana, for one, refused to express an opinion on whether Brown was correctly decided, sparking widespread media coverage. 

Vitter’s refusal to endorse the Brown decision stands alongside many years of indications that the nation has lost sight of the case’s importance. In overruling the late 19th-century case Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld segregation in Louisiana streetcars, the Supreme Court did more than just address who sat next to whom in American schools. It also served as the inspiration for efforts to end restrictions in public accommodations and in housing and to assure access to the voting booth. 

Brown’s significance also went beyond the nation’s borders. During the 1950s, the United States was embroiled in a Cold War with the Soviet Union. While U.S. leaders correctly saw Soviet forces as enemies of freedom, the world was watching as America hypocritically enforced the cruelties of apartheid on even its youngest citizens. 

The Truman Administration laid the dilemma out plainly: “The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries.” By addressing school segregation through Brown, the United States addressed the dissonance between its desire to be seen as a proponent of human rights and its denial of those rights to the descendants of people it had enslaved. 

After a period of fierce resistance to integration, Brown catalyzed progress in desegregating schools in the southern states, the sites of most of the early school desegregation cases. But enforcement of the order finding that segregation had harmed Black children “in a way unlikely ever to be undone” has been difficult. In recent years, court decisions have eroded the hard-fought progress in the South spurred by the Brown decision six decades ago. For example, researchers studied more than 200 school districts that were released from court-ordered desegregation plans between 1991 and 2008 and found them more likely to have increased segregation than schools that stayed under court oversight. 

Up North, segregation continues to be a reality in far too many schools as well, and groups like the Pacific Legal Foundation would like to keep it that way. The law firm is bringing a challenge to remedies in the ACLU lawsuit Sheff v. O’Neill, a groundbreaking, decades-long case that has reduced racial segregation in public schools in Hartford, Connecticut, and has become a model for desegregation efforts across the country. To protect the legacy and future of the community’s school integration efforts, the ACLU earlier this month joined the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. and the Center for Children’s Advocacy in filing a motion to intervene. 

From the threats to reverse the hard-fought gains in the Hartford area, to the white fear that summons police to detain innocent Black people in a Starbucks, it’s clear that Brown’s vision of a country where everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, can enjoy equal access to spaces has yet to be realized. 

Sixty-four years after Brown, the world is again watching to see whether the United States will walk the walk of equality that it has talked about, but ignored, for so long. History will judge us by our courts’ willingness and each of our efforts to ensure that children suffering the harmful consequences of segregation will get the same opportunities to learn as their white peers. This is the time to work toward true equality and justice. It’s not the time to roll back the progress that America has made – and has the potential to make — thanks to Brown. 

When Lt. Maysaa Ouza began her first assignment as an officer in the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps earlier this month, it was a historic moment. Lt. Ouza, a recent law school graduate, became the first Air Force JAG Corps officer authorized to wear hijab. Before she enlisted, the Air Force granted her a religious accommodation allowing her to wear hijab during basic and officer training and in her role as chief of legal advice at Scott Air Force Base.  The groundbreaking development was a long time in the making.

Lt. Ouza always knew that she wanted to serve her country. As the daughter of immigrants, she was called to give back by defending the very freedoms and liberties that have afforded her and her family so many opportunities.

When Lt. Ouza was in law school and began investigating her options for military service, however, there was one potential obstacle: her hijab. For Lt. Ouza, the practice of covering her hair and neck by wearing hijab reflects a core tenet of her Muslim faith. She believes that being forced to remove the head covering is humiliating and no different than being compelled to strip in front of others.

After being told by Air Force officials that she could seek a religious accommodation, Lt. Ouza continued to pursue her dream of military service, applying to the highly competitive and selective JAG Corps. By all accounts, she was an excellent candidate, and the Air Force approved her application.

But when it came time to accept a place in the JAG Corps, Lt. Ouza was informed that she could only request a religious accommodation after formally enlisting and contractually committing years of her life to military service. She would have to remove her hijab and begin basic training without the head covering, and she could only resume wearing hijab if and when she was granted a religious exemption to the rules. Failure to do so could mean disciplinary action.

If that sounds familiar, it should: The Army made the same argument a few years ago when it refused to grant a Sikh college student a religious accommodation to enroll in ROTC with his religiously-mandated beard and turban. We sued, and in a landmark victory, a federal court ruled in 2015 that the Army couldn’t legally justify denying our client a religious accommodation.

Highlighting the court’s decision in that 2015 case, the ACLU, ACLU of Michigan, the ACLU of the District of Columbia, along with the law firm of Hammoud, Dakhlallah & Associates PLLC, sent a letter to the Air Force on behalf of Lt. Ouza urging officials to reconsider their policy. To the credit of the Air Force, they reversed their decision and allowed Lt. Ouza to join the JAG Corps with a religious accommodation. They also took steps toward approving and implementing a new policy that, once finalized, will hopefully help future recruits who need religious exemptions avoid the same dilemma.

The result?

Lt. Ouza conquers an obstacle course during basic training in Alabama.

The Air Force gained a stellar new officer. Lt. Ouza successfully completed her basic training and officer training while wearing hijab. She was even awarded the “Airman of the Week” honor by her fellow trainees and instructors who described her as “a true leader who will greatly contribute to the Air Force and anything she pursues.” And, in July, she will attend further training in Alabama, where she will be promoted to captain upon graduation in September. 

Lt. Ouza has embarked on an exciting new career, achieving her long-held dream of serving and giving back to others. Her accomplishments and contributions show that religious diversity in the military only makes our country stronger.