Oregon's Top Civil Rights Lawyer Charges State Violated His Civil Rights

Oregon's chief civil rights lawyer is suing his employer charging the state violated his free speech rights and participated in "an egregious act of racial profiling" when the state's Department of Justice had labeled him a threat to law enforcement after he used the hashtag "BlackLivesMatter on social media.

The lawyer, Erious Johnson, had been informed of what happened by his manager, state Attorney General Ellen Rosenbaum.

Johnson is the department's Civil Rights Director.

A tweet of Johnson's that he sent out on Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday and included the logo for the rap group Public Enemy was also flagged.

The suit was filed Wednesday in federal court in Eugene.

“One year ago, Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum revealed to Erious Johnson, the director of her civil rights division that her Department of “Justice”
subjected him to illegal surveillance based on the twitter hashtag #blacklivesmatter, thereby profiling him based upon his political speech and his race," said Johnson's lawyer, Beth Creighton.

"Although the community called for accountability—a year later and DOJ has taken no action to address the atmosphere that fostered such profiling. Regardless of the Attorney General’s purported outrage, in the past year, there have been no trainings for anti-racial profiling. No trainings for diversity. No trainings for cultural competency. And no trainings for anti-bias to ensure that such violations will not occur in the future."

Creighton said that after the incident became public, an internal review by the department - which concluded the department had violated its own policies - had recommended taking those steps. The suit states those steps have not been taken.

In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Rosenblum praised Johnson.

"The Attorney General considers Mr. Johnson a valued member of her inner circle staff, as he serves as her outreach director to diverse communities throughout the state," said Kristina Edmunson. "Since the unfortunate incident involving the digital search of Mr. Johnson’s public tweets, the Attorney General has taken several personnel actions. Primarily, the investigator who conducted the search was terminated over the summer, the chief counsel for the criminal division was replaced, and the special agent in charge of the criminal justice division left the Oregon Department of Justice and has recently been replaced, effective this week.

"In addition, cultural competency and implicit bias training throughout DOJ will begin next month, starting with the Criminal Justice Division under the leadership of the new agent-in-charge and new chief counsel."

This story will be updated

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