The Atlantic: Did Jeff Sessions Champion Desegregation?

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Sessions is also listed on filings in the U.S. v. Dallas County Commission voting rights case, because it took place in his district. But Gerald Hebert, who was the lead civil rights division attorney on that case, said Sessions had little to do with the case itself. The case was a challenge to the county’s at-large method of electing members to the county board of education, contending that it violated black voters’ rights.

“He never filed anything in the Dallas County case that he wrote,” said Hebert, now with the Campaign Legal Center. “Usually, the civil rights division filed the briefs and wrote them. His name would have been included in the CRD draft, which is standard operating procedure.” During his 1986 confirmation hearing, Hebert testified that Sessions had described the ACLU and NAACP as “un-American” and called a white civil-rights attorney “a traitor to his race,” claims that Sessions denied.