The Trump administration said on Monday that it had opened a civil rights investigation into the city of Chicago to see if its mayor or others had engaged in a pattern of discrimination by hiring a number of Black people to senior positions.
The Justice Department’s civil rights division posted on social media a letter it sent to Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, quoting remarks he made Sunday at a local church in which he praised the number of Black people in top city jobs.
The so-called pattern or practice investigation is the Trump administration’s latest effort to remake the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which has historically worked to fight discrimination against minorities, to investigate claims of hiring or other bias in favor of candidates who are Black, minorities or women.
The Justice Department announced the investigation within a day of Mr. Johnson’s comments, at a Black church in the Woodlawn section of Chicago.
Speaking to congregants, Mr. Johnson said his administration was the most diverse in the city’s history. He added that some of his detractors had claimed he only ever talks about “the hiring of Black people.”
“No,” he continued. “What I’m saying is when you hire our people, we always look out for everybody else. We are the most generous people on the planet.”
Mr. Johnson added: “When you ask, how do we ensure that our people get a chance to grow their business, having people in my administration that will look out for the interests of everyone, and everyone means you have to look out for the interests of Black folks, because that hasn’t happened. That’s how we ensure long-term sustainable growth.”
In the Justice Department letter, the head of the civil rights division, Harmeet K. Dhillon, said the comments justified investigating the city’s hiring practices to see if they discriminated against people who are not Black.
“If these kind of hiring decisions are being made for top-level positions in your administration, then it begs the question whether such decisions are also being made for lower-level positions,” Ms. Dhillon wrote.
A pattern or practice investigation is different from a criminal inquiry. When such investigations find a pattern of discrimination, they can be settled with a court-approved agreement, known as a consent decree, which imposes new requirements on the local or state agency under scrutiny. Historically, such consent decrees have frequently focused on trying to improve treatment of minorities by police departments, or in hiring and promotions within city or state agencies.
The Trump administration has taken a skeptical view of using consent decrees to overhaul police departments, and Ms. Dhillon has said that her office is reviewing every existing consent decree, some of which are decades old.
Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the F.B.I. for The Times.
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