Media Center

Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the following statement applauding the Obama Administration's plan to help make it easier for underwater homeowners to refinance their mortgages to take advantage of historically low interest rates. The Obama Administration estimates that the plan could help nearly 11 million underwater Americans save approximately $3,000 a year on their housing payments. U.S. homeowners owe approximately $700 billion in underwater debt as a result of the financial crisis of 2008.

Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) and Reverend Charles E. Williams II, president of the Detroit chapter of the National Action Network, met Governor Rick Snyder to discuss Michigan's Emergency Managers law, Public Act 4. The meeting occurred prior to Governor Snyder's testimony before the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

Today, House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the following statement in advance of the second anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which falls on tomorrow January 21. The Supreme Court's decision in the Citizens United case wiped out a century of legal precedent, granting corporations the same free speech rights as individuals and allowing for unlimited spending by corporations and special interests on political campaigns.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the detention center located at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. On January 11, 2002, the Bush administration transported twenty detainees to the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the first of 775 detainees that have been housed at the facility over the past ten years. A decade after its creation, 171 detainees remain housed at the facility, 89 of whom have been cleared for release but whose transfer has been blocked by provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act. House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a consolidated case involving recent changes to Texas' congressional district map. According to the 2010 census, Texas gained more than 4 million new residents with much of the growth occurring in the state's African American and Latino population. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), Texas must seek preclearance from the Department of Justice for changes to its congressional district map to ensure against retrogression – that minority voters are not worse off under the new plans.

Yesterday, the Obama administration announced a common sense proposal to fix a bureaucratic snag in our immigration system that often results in the prolonged separation of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens from their children and spouses. House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) released the following statement in response to the announcement:

Today, the House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on H.R. 3261, the "Stop Online Piracy Act." The bill protects American jobs by modernizing criminal and civil statutes to meet new intellectual property enforcement challenges presented by the proliferation of websites dedicated to intellectual property theft and fraud. Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) made the following statement after the hearing:

Today, the House of Representatives approved a Senate amendment to H.R. 1059, a bill authored by House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.). H.R. 1059, as amended, extends by six years the authority of the Judicial Conference of the United States to redact personal and sensitive information from financial disclosure reports filed by judges and judicial branch employees, such as the filer's home address or spouse's workplace address. Ranking Member Conyers released the following statement in response to the House's action: