WASHINGTON _ Under the Obama administration, the Justice Department's civil rights division was rebuilt into what former Attorney General Eric Holder called the agency's' "crown jewel."
But many civil rights advocates and legal scholars are worried that the unit expects, at a minimum, a dramatically different focus.
They predict the Justice Department in the coming years will be less likely to sue states over voting restrictions that target the poor or minorities, to hold police departments accountable for abuses or fight in court for the rights of transgender people.
Also vulnerable are Justice Department guidelines set under President Barack Obama that sought more lenient sentences for nonviolent offenders and restricted racial profiling and surveillance of Muslims.
"We are very concerned that simple inactivity by the Department of Justice will help undo the progress made over the last eight years," said Michael W. Macleod-Ball, attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington. "It's not a good time to unwind efforts intended to make life fairer for vulnerable populations."
Civil rights groups are particularly worried that such changes might follow an election in which President-elect Donald Trump's candidacy was enthusiastically backed by the alt-right movement, white supremacists and hate groups with long histories of seeking to repress minorities.
"There are many in the civil rights community who are prepared to stand opposed to anyone who would turn back the clock," said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. "These are among the most important issues in our country now."
Because Trump has released few policy papers or proposals dealing with criminal justice matters, civil rights advocates and former Justice Department officials have been left to guess about his positions through his Twitter posts, campaign speeches and three debate performances.
Trump Friday named Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., as his choice for attorney general. He is known for his conservative credentials and is considered to hold views similar to those who ran the Justice Department during the George W. Bush administration, when civil rights enforcement was often overshadowed by other issues.
With Trump's election, Republicans and conservatives are enthusiastic about what they see as a reversal of Obama administration policies in the civil rights arena that they believe went too far, particularly in the investigations of police departments, lawsuits against states over voter ID laws and the refusal to defend a federal law prohibiting the recognition of same-sex marriages.
"I am hopeful that the Trump administration will bring professionalism and ethics back to the Justice Department, including the civil rights division," said Hans A. von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank.
Von Spakovsky said he believed the civil rights division will continue to bring voting rights cases as merited, but that the department had gone too far under Obama in suing states over their voter ID laws, despite a 2008 Supreme Court ruling upholding such requirements.
Von Spakovsky said the department's investigations into local police departments appeared to be an effort to impose federal standards, rather than correct unconstitutional violations of civil rights.
"They are not a national police agency with supervision over local police departments," Von Spakovsky said. "All of the factors that go into these reports had nothing to do whatsoever with the questions of whether local law enforcement was violating peoples' rights. They have seen it as a way of forcing their pet views on social policy unto towns and cities. And that is not the purpose of the federal law that is geared towards stopping unconstitutional violations of rights."
After a 2013 Supreme Court ruling the ruling freed several Southern states to change their voting laws without pre-approval from the Justice Department, the Obama administration and voting-rights groups sued to block or overturn several new voter ID laws as discriminatory.
They persuaded appeals courts to block strict voter ID laws in Texas and North Carolina.
In the past eight years, the Justice Department has investigated nearly two dozen police forces over allegations of civil rights abuses; two high-profile investigations of the Baltimore and Chicago police departments remain unresolved, though Baltimore and the Justice Department agreed in principle to overhaul the city's troubled force. The Justice Department would like to finalize a consent decree with Baltimore before Attorney General. Loretta Lynch, who took over from Holder in April 2015, leaves office.
The civil rights division is also conducting criminal investigations into the -profile deaths of two black men in 2014 that occurred during encounters with police officers: Eric Garner, who died after being put in a chokehold by a New York City police officer, and Freddie Gray, who died from injuries after being arrested by Baltimore police. A Justice Department spokesman declined to discuss the status of those inquiries.
Civil rights advocates point to Trump's statements during the campaign as evidence that he plans to take the Justice Department into a new direction, reshaping the work of the 400-attorney civil rights division.
Trump, for example, has backed "stop and frisk" policies in his hometown of New York that have been ruled unconstitutional by a federal court. He says such aggressive tactics reduced crime.
Under Obama, the Justice Department generally opposed such tactics if they disproportionately affected certain communities. Their efficacy was also questioned.
The president-elect has appeared less resistant to allowing law enforcement agencies to use racial profiling, particularly to prevent terrorism.
And he has challenged what he called the Justice Department's "rollback of criminal enforcement." That comment was an apparent jab at efforts by Justice Department officials to refocus prosecutors on seeking more lenient punishments for nonviolent drug offenders in an effort to deal with overcrowded prisons and to mete out punishment more fairly.
Significant changes are not unique for the civil rights division, which was founded in the late 1950s, or in how the Justice Department tackles issues of race, sex, identity and discrimination.
When Obama took office in 2009, Holder found the civil rights division in disarray and demoralized, according to Justice Department officials. One of the primary reasons was that a former head of the division had violated civil service laws by hiring conservatives and Republicans for nonpolitical positions, an inspector general found.
He also referred to the career attorneys in the division as "mold spores," "commies" and "crazy libs."
Holder added lawyers and pushed them to make cases, particularly in areas of voting rights and overseeing police departments. Lynch has pursued the same initiatives while seeking to find ways to bridge gaps between police and the communities they serve. She is racing to finish a report laying out a blueprint for the best ways to improve such relations, officials said.
It's also unclear whether Trump will continue Obama's push to soften sentencing guidelines and reduce sentences for thousands of prisoners convicted of drug crimes. Previous guidelines have been criticized for falling hardest on African American offenders.
Since taking office, Obama has commuted the sentences of more than 900 prisoners, most of them nonviolent and low-level offenders.
"That whole agenda _ that our criminal system is far too harsh and has race baked into it, and we need to deal with it _ well, that orientation will be very different in a Trump administration," said Jonathan Smith, a former lawyer in the civil rights division and executive director of the Washington Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs.
