In recent years, the Bush administration has recast the federal government’s role in civil rights by aggressively pursuing religion-oriented cases while significantly diminishing its involvement in the traditional area of race.

Paralleling concerns of many conservative groups, the Justice Department has successfully argued in a number of cases that government agencies, employers or private organizations have improperly suppressed religious expression in situations that the Constitution’s drafters did not mean to restrict.

The shift at the Justice Department has significantly altered the government’s civil rights mission, said Brian K. Landsberg, a law professor at the University of the Pacific and a former Justice Department lawyer under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

“Not until recently has anyone in the department considered religious discrimination such a high priority,” Professor Landsberg said. “No one had ever considered it to be of the same magnitude as race or national origin.”

The changes are evident in a variety of actions:
Intervening in federal court cases on behalf of religion-based groups like the Salvation Army that assert they have the right to discriminate in hiring in favor of people who share their beliefs even though they are running charitable programs with federal money.

Supporting groups that want to send home religious literature with schoolchildren; in one case, the government helped win the right of a group in Massachusetts to distribute candy canes as part of a religious message that the red stripes represented the blood of Christ.

Vigorously enforcing a law enacted by Congress in 2000 that allows churches and other places of worship to be free of some local zoning restrictions. The division has brought more than two dozen lawsuits on behalf of churches, synagogues and mosques.

Along with its changed civil rights mission, the department has also tried to overhaul the roster of government lawyers who deal with civil rights. The agency has transferred or demoted some experienced civil rights litigators while bringing in lawyers, including graduates of religious-affiliated law schools and some people vocal about their faith, who favor the new priorities. That has created some unease, with some career lawyers disdainfully referring to the newcomers as “holy hires.”

[Former Civil Rights Prosecutor Rigel] Oliveri recalled that when she was hired in 2000 by the Justice Department, she was impressed by the accomplishments of her peers. But once the political appointees controlled the hiring, she said, “The change in the quality of people who were chosen was very pronounced.”
When the front office sent around the résumés of those newly hired for the honors program, she said, “It was obvious what they had: conservative and religious bona fides.”

[Cynthia] Magnuson, the Justice Department spokeswoman, said it was justified in devoting so much attention to the issue because Congress has demonstrated its interest by including religion in the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and enacting the 2000 law involving zoning restrictions, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.

Ms. Magnuson also said the department had not diminished its interest in enforcing racial and national origin discrimination cases. The changes at the Justice Department began under Attorney General John Ashcroft, but have accelerated under Alberto R. Gonzales, his successor.

Mr. Gonzales has increasingly cited his agency’s record on behalf of religious causes as among his most important accomplishments, often noting the successful intervention in cases on behalf of people who had suffered discrimination for wearing Muslim head coverings. In speeches, he routinely says that religious freedom is the nation’s “first freedom because our founders saw fit to place it first in the Bill of Rights.”

At the same time, the department has sharply reduced its efforts to combat voting rights plans that may dilute black electoral strength.
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Joseph D. Rich, who recently stepped down as head of the voting rights section after a 37-year career at Justice, said that only the federal government had the resources to bring voting dilution cases, while private groups have been able to bring the language cases. The civil rights division also brought the first case ever on behalf of white voters, alleging in 2005 that a black political leader in Noxubee County, Miss., was intimidating whites at the polls.

The shift in priorities at the criminal section of the civil rights division has been especially stark. The criminal section — which previously had mostly focused on hate crimes or lawsuits against police officers who may have violated someone’s civil rights — began taking on human trafficking cases that had previously been handled elsewhere.
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Pursuing trafficking cases, rather than those involving hate crimes or police abuse, was seen as important to moving ahead in the department, current and former career officials said. They added that political appointees in supervisory positions frequently vetoed proposed hate crime investigations or questioned them to death.

“You only needed for that to happen a few times and people got the message they shouldn’t be eager to send up such cases,” said one lawyer who would talk only on condition of anonymity.