A bill to ban racial profiling never made it to President Barack Obama"s desk.
The White House didn't speak up in favor of the most recent versions in the House and Senate, according to Rights Working Group, which advocates for policies to prohibit racial profiling at the local, state and federal level.
"His White House has not actually taken an active role," said Margaret Huang, executive director of Rights Working Group.
The legislation, known as the End of Racial Profiling Act of 2011, didn't make it to a committee vote, though it did gain sponsors in both chambers, a move forward from our update in 2010.
Huang said the administration said it would wait to weigh in until the legislation hit the House or Senate floor.
The second question, whether the administration provided federal funding to state and local police departments if they adopted policies that prohibited the practice, is "complicated," Huang said.
What's more clear is that the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice investigated local agencies for discriminating on the basis of race or national origin, such as the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office in Arizona led by Joe Arpaio.
But Huang didn't hear of funding being jeopardized on the basis of such investigations, much less the opposite — support for agencies who performed well.
"So, it's a mixed record,” she said.
The White House didn't provide additional evidence.
Obama promised to sign legislation that will ban the practice of racial profiling. Such a bill never made it to his desk, and a key advocacy group says the White House didn't take an active role to get it there. Meanwhile, we don't see evidence of additional federal funding for agencies that adopted policies to prohibit the practice. We rate this Promise Broken.