Attorney General Eric Holder speaks at the University of the District of Columbia on Thursday (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Attorney General Eric Holder defended the Justice Department’s support for the federal law banning the recognition of gay marriage Thursday night, reiterating that the DOJ is obligated to enforce all federal laws regardless of the current administration’s opinions on the issue.

“You have to understand that the Solicitor General’s office of the Department of Justice has a responsibility to defend those statutes that the Congress has passed if there is an argument that can be made to defend those statutes,” Holder said during a question and answer session after delivering a speech at the University of the District of Columbia Law School. “Whether we agree with them or not, the Justice Department by tradition is bound to do so. …Anybody who knows me knows that this is not a statute that I agree with, but there are times as lawyers when obligations that we have and the traditions of the Justice Department to defend an act with which we do not agree.”

Holder delivered the Joseph L. Rauh Jr. Lecture Thursday night. The annual lecture is named for the prominent civil rights lawyer, a longtime board member of the NAACP who lobbied Congress to pass many of the country’s civil rights laws.

During his speech, Holder touched on the volunteer work that the approximately 300 law students are required to complete each year.

“Your responsibility to serve others has proven to be not only an effective means of providing your community with much-needed legal assistance, but also an effective means of learning the law,” Holder said. “I believe we have arrived at a watershed moment. The choices we now make will reverberate for decades to come. But some important decisions must be made. After all, we face a crisis in our justice system – an environment where, despite our founding promise of justice for all, we still must strive to reach that vaunted goal.”

Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and a professor at UDC with Attorney General Eric Holder (photo by Ryan J. Reilly / Main Justice).

Holder also said he would sign a petition the law school was circulating to have President Barack Obama speak at the law school. The Attorney General said he would deliver the petition to Obama himself.

During the question and answer session, Holder discussed a number of legal issues including changing the so-called public safety exception to Miranda warnings for criminal suspects; D.C. voting rights; and the Supreme Court’s recent campaign finance decision, Citizens United.

On Miranda Rights and the public safety exception

With regard to the question of Miranda, I think a lot of the concern comes from something I talked about on the Sunday shows a few weeks ago about what we were considering in the administration. Let me be very clear: the proposals that were are thinking about, just thinking about at this point, have nothing to do with Miranda itself. Miranda is a constitutional [right]. There is nothing we could do by statute, by regulation. What we are talking about is the exception.

So in the limited sphere of just dealing with terrorism — only terrorism — one of the thoughts is that we need guidance from Congress on the public safety exception to define for us what is it our agents can do, what they can’t do.

On Voting Rights in the District of Columbia

As a D.C. resident… this is not a political question, this is a moral one. If residents of this city pay taxes in the amount that they do, serve in our armed forces the way that they do, are good Americans in the way that we are, we simply deserve the vote. Politicians should figure what the manner is in which we make this happen. It’s way past the time right now when every D.C. resident should have representation.

On Citizens United Decision

Well, first, I think will all due respect, the Supreme Court got it wrong. When we look at the possibilities of what this decision unleashed I’m worried what the midterm elections will look like, what the presidential election will look like in 2012. The court reversed decades of decisions that went the other way.

Wade [Henderson is] a person, I’m a person, and now suddenly a corporation’s a person. The logic of the decision escapes me. The impact, the negative impact, the potential negative impact of the decision, scares me. So we’ll see how it plays out, but we in the administration are crafting a series of things that we’re going to be presenting to Congress that will, we hope, limit the negative impact of the decision.

For the second time in a year, the Justice Department is facing criticism from gays rights leaders for the language the DOJ used in a lawsuit defending a law on the books that the Obama administration said it wants overturned.

The latest flap came Monday when, according to Politico, the Justice Department cited Colin Powell’s 1993 opinion in favor of “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell,” a position he has since reversed. Among other points, DOJ argued that the presence of gays in the military increases sexual tension and invades the privacy of service members.

Justice Department Tracy Schmaler told Politico that the administration still wants to repeal “this discriminatory law” but has to defend any act of Congress in court.

“In this case the department is defending the statute, as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged,” she said. “The department does not pick and choose which federal laws it will defend based on any one administration’s policy preferences.”

DOJ cited Powell’s opinion in response to a lawsuit from the Log Cabin Republicans.

Gay rights supporters have criticized the DOJ, saying the arguments the department marshaled to defending the statute were  offensive. Lawyer John Aravosis also argued on AMERICAblog that the Justice Department has previously declined to defend laws passed by Congress.

In June, the Justice Department came under fire after it filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act. DOJ lawyers later filed an amended brief clarifying the administration’s position on DOMA, but argued that they had the responsibility to defend it in court.

In October, a gay DOJ employee told Main Justice the Justice Department has made considerable progress on the issue of gay rights, but that the gay community was outraged by the DOMA brief.

The Justice Department’s response to the lawsuit from the Log Cabin Republicans is embedded below.

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Matt Nosanchuk

We’ve obtained an e-mail from University of Pennsylvania Professor Tobias Wolff, a top LGBT adviser on the Obama campaign, announcing the news to his associates.

Wolff said that Matt Nosanchuk, a former adviser to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), will join the division as a senior counselor. Nosanchuk ”will be the front office point person on LGBT issues for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division,” Wolff wrote in the e-mail.

POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein, who first got hold of the email last night, reported:

The hire looks like yet another effort by the Obama Administration to calm the anger of the gay community over a series of perceived slights, including a controversial brief filed in June in a lawsuit over the Defense of Marriage Act.

Justice Department lawyers, dialing back their defense,  said in a court filing yesterday that DOMA discriminates against gays but that the new administration will continue to uphold the law as long as it is on the books.

A DOJ spokesperson was not immediately available to comment on Wolff’s e-mail.

UPDATE:

DOJ spokesperson Alejandro Miyar issued the following statement on Nosanchuk:

“Matt Nosanchuk joined the Civil Rights Division earlier this summer as a Senior Counselor. He brings extensive experience as a civil rights attorney from his time in Congress, as well as work in the non-profit and private sectors. Among his primary duties, Matt will help manage the Division’s Criminal Section and pursue key policy priorities. He will represent the Division in many capacities, including work with Congress and the LGBT community. He returns to the Justice Department after having been a career attorney in the Office of Policy Development during the Clinton Administration.”

Andrew Ramonas contributed to this report.

The Justice Department said in a court filing submitted today that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act discriminates against gays but DOJ will continue to uphold the federal law that does not recognize gay marriage as long as it is on the books. Read the filing obtained by Politico here.

DOJ is seeking to have an anti-DOMA suit filed by a gay California couple thrown out. President Obama has been under attack by gay rights groups for DOJ’s defense of the federal law that does not recognize gay marriage.

Justice Department officials and Obama met in June with organizations that were angry about DOJ’s efforts to uphold DOMA, which leaves the decision to recognize gay marriage up to the states. He told gay rights advocates that he is committed to gay rights and supported repealing DOMA.

“This administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal,” DOJ Senior Trial Counsel Scott Simpson wrote in the filing today. ”Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the department disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here.”

He added in a footnote: “This longstanding and bipartisan tradition accords the respect appropriately due to a coequal branch of government and ensures that subsequent administrations will faithfully defend laws with which they may disagree on policy grounds.”

Massachusetts placed the Justice Department between a rock and a hard place yesterday by suing the U.S. government over the Defense of Marriage Act. Read The Associated Press report here.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley filed the lawsuit in Boston contesting the federal law that does not recognize gay marriage. The suit argues that the act “constitutes an overreaching and discriminatory federal law,” according to The AP. Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine and Iowa have legalized gay marriage in their states.

The Justice Department defended the act last month, which infuriated gay rights groups. President Obama has tried to mend bridges with the gay community since then. He told gay rights advocates two weeks ago that he is committed to gay rights and supported repealing DOMA.

An attorney for a homosexual couple now plans to use comments made by President Obama on the Defense of Marriage Act last week in federal court this August to argue for the federal government’s recognition of gay marriage, The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday.

The Justice Department invoked DOMA earlier this month in a motion to dismiss the marriage case filed in federal court. The DOJ said the case should be handled by a state court because it involves a gay couple married in California. The federal 1996 Defense of Marriage Act leaves the decision of recognizing gay marriage up to the states.

The DOJ’s motion made many gay rights groups livid. The DOJ Civil Division will meet with some of these organizations today, Politico reported yesterday.

But now The Chronicle said attorney Richard Gilbert plans to argue that gay marriage is a federal issue because of comments President Obama made on DOMA last Wednesday when he announced that homosexual partners of federal employees would receive some government benefits. “It’s discriminatory, it interferes with states’ rights, and it’s time we overturned it,” Obama said.

“It appears to me that the president of the United States is making it clear that the attorneys for the United States do not represent the views of the administration,” Gilbert told the Chronicle. “I think they have a duty to withdraw their motion. I think they have a duty to join my side of the case.”

The mayors of San Francisco and Los Angeles criticized the Justice Department for its recent brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the 1996 law that says the federal government doesn’t recognize gay marriage.

“I think it’s a big mistake,” San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said, according to the LA Times. Newsom made is remarks as he and Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of LA, kicked off the annual LA Pride parade in West Hollywood.

Read our previous coverage of the uproar in the gay community over the Obama DOJ’s position here.