Justice Department No. 3 official pledges to fight hate crimes, fueled by personal story : NPR

When the Justice Department’s third-in-command announced nearly $30 million in new federal funds to fight the rise in hate crimes last week, he paused to share a personal reflection.

Ben Mizer told the audience he was “almost exactly the same age” as Matthew Shepard would have been, another young gay man living in a small college town in the late 1990s. Attackers beat Shepard, tied him to a fence and left him to die in 1998, striking fear and horror across the nation. The law named after him — and passed more than a decade later — gave the federal government new tools to prosecute people who are fueled by hate.

“What I would say to members of the LGBTQ community is that the Justice Department is working day and day out on their behalf to ensure that their rights and dignity are protected,” Mizer said in a recent interview. “And I’m proud to be a member of that community and at a senior level of the department.”

The FBI reported more than 11,000 hate crimes in 2023, including a steep increase in anti-Jewish and anti-Black incidents. Mizer and other Justice Department leaders have been targeting those and other crime problems with a two-pronged approach: prosecuting offenders and making financial investments in public safety. The Justice Department administers billions in federal grants. Its Office of Justice Programs has already invested more than $70 million into fighting hate crimes over the past several years.

Mizer, 47, oversees an enormous portfolio at the DOJ, from antitrust and the environment to civil rights. In recent weeks, he’s helped launch a lawsuit against the operators of a ship that brought down Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge; announce a settlement over the Norfolk Southern train carrying toxic chemicals that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, not far from where he spent his childhood; and bring blockbuster antitrust cases against Apple, Ticketmaster and Visa.

“I think economic justice means ensuring that everyone has a fair shake, that the playing field is level and that corporations are not using their power in unfair ways to harm competition or to harm consumers,” Mizer said.

The son of two union workers, Mizer said he went to law school at the University of Michigan to “help the little guy.” Since then, Mizer has served as solicitor general in his home state of Ohio, and had two separate stints at the Justice Department in Washington.

In the Obama years, Mizer helped implement a U.S. Supreme Court decision that invalidated the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that defined marriage as between one man and one woman. He sat in on the oral argument at the high court for another case, Obergefell v. Hodges, that ultimately legalized same-sex marriage.

“My husband and I enjoy the benefits of the tremendous advances that were made with respect to gay rights during the Obama era,” Mizer said. “But that is not to say that those battles are completely won.”

Mizer said he’s proud of the work the DOJ has done to challenge state laws that could deprive transgender people of gender-affirming care — and to protect women’s rights to travel to secure health care including abortion services.

It’s not clear whether Mizer will stick around at Justice, in the event Vice President Harris wins the White House. But he said working at DOJ has been “the honor of a lifetime.”