'Attempted usurpation': Far-right Republican hurls accusations at civil rights manager

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is now facing a congressional probe led by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) who blasted the head of the federal agency for a recent change he claimed exceeded its authority.

In a letter on Wednesday Roy, who chairs the subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, confronted the commission over a rule giving its Obama-appointed staff director the power to appoint members of the bipartisan State Advisory Committees.

“The Subcommittee understands that you have embraced this claim,” Roy wrote in the letter addressed to staff director Mauro Albert Morales. “By endorsing and implementing this view, however, you have upended the Commission’s 65-year practice of approving SAC members by a majority vote of the Commissioners.”

The SACs are mandated by Congress and consist of one advisory committee for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the five U.S. territories, according to the commission, which itself is composed of eight members — four Democrats, three Republicans and one independent.

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Roy on Wednesday told Morales that only commissioners themselves can appoint members to the advisory committees, a practice he said had not been altered since their establishment by Congress in 1983.

“The staff director, however, is not the Commission’s agency head,” Roy’s letter said. “The Commission’s ‘agency head’ are, properly understood, the eight members who comprise the Commission.”

The far-right Texas lawmaker claimed that Morales’ position comes “only with administrative power, not any powers or duties vested in the Commission as a whole.”

“The attempted usurpation of the Commission’s authority to appoint SACs exceeds the authority granted to your position in statute,” Roy concluded in his letter.

He gave Morales two weeks to provide the congressional subcommittee documents and communications relating to “the circumstances that led to the Commission’s staff director usurping authority properly reserved to the Commission itself.”