Some civil rights officials in the Obama Administration expressed the view that Voting Rights Act was specifically intended to correct historic injustices against minorities.[1] The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Washington Post pointed out that although the Department of Justice dismissed Adams' testimony as that of a partisan hired during the Bush Administration, Coates is of a different pedigree and cannot be ignored as easily. Coates worked for the American Civil Liberties Union for nearly 20 years, receiving the Thurgood Marshall Decade Award from the Georgia NAACP in 1991,[2] and was hired by the Justice Department during the Clinton Administration in 1996.[3]