Andy Strojny

The first President Bush appointed Andy, Acting Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices, heading what at the time was an independent office within the Department of Justice. He served as Acting Special Counsel or Deputy Special Counsel for almost 4 years. Prior to that he served as a senior attorney in the Office for 3 years. To hear Andy talk about it, this clearly was the job that had his heart. Apparently the Department's too as he received a $10,000 award for his performance as Acting Special Counsel.

Andy retired from the federal government after over 35 years of service. During that time he gained experience in virtually every facet of federal civil rights enforcement. He joined the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in 1970. At the time, he was the youngest attorney ever employed by the Division. He did police brutality cases and received letters of commendation from the Acting Attorney General and the United States Attorney in St. Louis for a grand jury investigation he conducted into the death of a prisoner while in police custody.

He went on to become one of the founding members of the Civil Rights Division's Title VI Section before moving on to become Chief of the External Compliance Division at the old Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA). He successfully resolved investigations of the New Orleans, San Diego, and St. Louis Police Departments, among others. He also participated in investigations of the San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Phoenix Police Departments, and the South Carolina Highway Patrol, among others. Along the way he worked on the Title VII discrimination cases against the Chicago Police and Fire Departments. While at LEAA, he also conducted a comprehensive survey of the racial and sexual composition of all major police departments.

From there he was detailed to the President's Reorganization Project at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) helping draft Executive Order 12250, which provides the basis for much of the work of the Civil Rights Division's Coordination and Review Section, then called the Title VI Section. He returned to the Civil Rights Division's Title VI Section, which by then had been renamed the Federal Programs Section, and drafted model agency regulations, which among other things gave clear responsibility to agency Title VI directors to make Title VI compliance decisions. He worked to have all federal agencies adopt them. The General Accounting Office (GAO) reported that Title VI enforcement should improve if his changes were adopted.

Then he was again detailed to OMB with its newly created Civil Rights Office for policy. Here during the early 1980's he was instrumental in having civil rights provisions he helped draft become part of the Administration's block grant legislation. Then OMB Director David Stockman directed that all Administration block grant proposals contain the civil rights provisions Andy helped draft.

He then headed the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) External Civil Rights Program and later as an attorney then as Deputy and then as Acting Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practices.

He eventually moved on to become a Deputy in the Civil Rights Division's Coordination and Review Section (the renamed Federal Programs Section) where he helped create an outstanding Title VI training program for other federal agencies and recipients of federal financial assistance. He also established the Section's website, the first such site in the Civil Rights Division.

He retired as Manager of External Compliance at the Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Department of Homeland Security. To hear him talk about it, this job also had a piece of his heart. He relished helping to ensure that our quest for security does not result in an undue loss of liberty.