A report found young applicants deemed liberal or Democrat were rejected for jobs.
WASHINGTON - Scores of highly credentialed young lawyers and law students were denied interviews for coveted positions at the Justice Department because of an illegal screening process that took political and ideological views and affiliations into account rather than merit, Justice Department investigators concluded in a report released Tuesday.
In 2006, some applicants for sought-after jobs in the department's honors program and summer intern program were rejected because they were members of the American Constitution Society or Planned Parenthood or because they expressed concern about gender discrimination in the military, the report found.
Other students or graduates who were brushed aside included a University of Alabama law graduate, ranked sixth in the class, who had written a paper on the detention of aliens under the USA Patriot Act, a Yale Law School graduate who was fluent in Arabic and a Georgetown law student who had worked for Sen. John Kerry's presidential campaign.
In another case, a Harvard Law student was passed over after criticizing the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court.
Justice Department officials told investigators the applicants were turned down for reasons of academic performance. But most, if not all, of the applicants had superior records, and those explanations were not deemed credible, according to the report.
Career staff and other senior officials openly complained about bias in the process, but their complaints were ignored, investigators found.
"When it comes to the hiring of nonpartisan career attorneys, our system of justice should not be corrupted by partisan politics," said Rep. John Conyers Jr., D-Mich., chairman of the Judiciary Committee. "It appears the politicization at Justice was so pervasive that even interns had to pass a partisan litmus test."
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