Investigate The Investigators!

Craig DeRoche, the Speaker of the House in Michigan, and Chris Ward, the majority floor leader, have just sent a letter to the Michigan Attorney General requesting a formal investigation and audit of the Michigan Civil Rights Commission.

The Michigan Civil Rights Commission has joined with One United Michigan (the chairman even held a fund-raiser for them), the leading organization opposing equal rights in Michigan, in an ongoing attempt to keep MCRI off the ballot because some signers, they claim, believed that MCRI — a measure requiring the state to treat all citizens without regard to race — was a civil rights measure.

“We believe the CRC,” DeRoche and Ward write in their letter, “in conducting its investigation, negligently or wantonly may have exceeded its constitutional and statutory investigation powers.”

We have reviewed Mich. Const. 1963 Art. V, § 29 and MCL 37.2601 et seq. While the CRC clearly has the authority to investigate “discrimination against any person because of religion, race, color or national origin in the enjoyment of the civil rights guaranteed by law and by this constitution,” we do not see where it derives the authority to equate petition gathering with a civil rights violation. Indeed, by subjecting those engaged in legitimate political activities to investigation and intimidation, all because several adults–including numerous judges–claimed that they did not understand the petition they signed, the CRC is engaged in a dangerous suppression of political speech. Rather than encouraging the exercise of rights, the CRC is seeking to harass and tarnish those who dare exercise those rights.

Since MCRI, as its ballot language states, would ban “programs that give preferential treatment to groups or individuals based on their race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin for public employment, education or contracting purposes,” you might think that a state agency charged with investigating “discrimination against any person because of religion, race, color or national origin” would be enthusiastically supporting it instead of fighting it and funding its opponents.

But to think that you’d have to think that today’s “civil rights” organizations actually support civil rights, a proposition for which there is less and less evidence.

See here for a Michgian Civil Rights Commission report alledging fraud in the gathering of MCRI petitions, and here for a point by point rebuttal.

Say What?