EXCLUSIVE: Trump?s Justice Department is investigating 60% fewer civil rights cases than Obama's

Watch VICE News Tonight on HBO weekdays at 7:30.The Trump administration is pursuing far fewer civil rights cases — including hate crimes, police bias, and disability rights cases — than the Obama or Bush administration did, an exclusive VICE News analysis of Department of Justice data shows.The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division — which has enforced nearly every pivotal moment of rights reform since its creation in 1957 — has started 60 percent fewer cases against potential violations during the first two years of the Trump administration than during the Obama years and 50 percent fewer than under George W. The Trump administration has emphasized enforcement of these crimes as a focus for the division.The Trump administration is pursuing far fewer civil rights cases — including hate crimes, police bias, and disability rights cases — than the Obama or Bush administration did, an exclusive VICE News analysis of Department of Justice data shows.The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division — which has enforced nearly every pivotal moment of rights reform since its creation in 1957 — has started 60 percent fewer cases against potential violations during the first two years of the Trump administration than during the Obama years and 50 percent fewer than under George W. The Trump administration has emphasized enforcement of these crimes as a focus for the division.Former division heads say significant staffing cuts to the department over the past two years, poor morale, attrition, and a lack of emphasis on civil rights under the Trump administration are behind the drop-off in cases.“[Trump] certainly has no inclination for defending the civil rights of individuals. Cases are logged when the Civil Rights Division begins a formal investigation of a company, police department, organization, or person suspected of violating civil rights. Vanita Gupta, a former head of the division in the Obama administration and current president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said that larger, systemic cases are at a low point.Read more: Is Trump's war on the DOJ obstruction? “It amounts to the difference between switching from the left lane to the right lane … and driving on the wrong side of the road,” said Justin Levitt, a former attorney in the division under Obama.Lawyers said the sea change in the department’s approach will have consequences for civil rights in both the short and long term.“It means that [people] can’t look to the federal government any more for ensuring that they can fully participate without fear of voter suppression, and that they can’t hold accountable acts of police misconduct and the like,” Gupta said.The heart of the division and majority of the workforce are career civil rights attorneys and staff. (Some settlement agreements are court-enforceable, but most new agreements under the Trump administration have not been.) “If they violate [settlement agreements], you have to start all over,” Dunne said.In part because of the difficulty of remedying violations, many civil rights attorneys believe that consent decrees are more likely to encourage compliance than settlement agreements. In total, last year’s case volume has been about 50 percent lower than when Obama was president, while 2017’s was about 40 percent lower.Because cases often take many years to advance from investigations to complaints to legal agreements, it’s likely that the full impact of the Trump administration's decision to bring fewer civil rights cases won’t be felt for some time.