As an Illinois state senator, Barack Obama sponsored and helped pass a law to end racial profiling in that state. As a U.S. senator, he co-sponsored legislation to ban the practice by federal agencies, and as a candidate for president he pledged to sign such a bill into law.

That bill just hasn't made it to his desk.

Liberal Democrats in Congress, led in the House by Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers of Michigan and in the Senate by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, have been trying to pass the End Racial Profiling Act, or ERPA, since 2001. The most recent iteration, however, was filed in 2007, and there is no active legislation now before Congress.

Past versions of the bill would prohibit federal agencies from using racial profiling; allow people to sue if they suffer damages because they were profiled; and tie federal funding for state and local law enforcement agencies to their development of anti-profiling procedures.

Presumably, any new ERPA bill would feature the same basic tenents, and signing it would fulfill Obama's campaign promise. The White House still lists banning racial profiling among its priorties for civil rights, but its status in Congress is a little fuzzy. The American Bar Association sent Conyers a letter on Dec. 1 lauding him for introducing the End Racial Profiling Act of 2009 and promising its support, but after an extensive search of Thomas.gov, congressional Web sites and advocacy groups, it does not appear that the bill has actually been filed.

In a Dec. 7, 2009, guest column in the Baltimore Sun , two ERPA advocates -- NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous and Margaret Huang, executive director of the Rights Working Group -- write that 40 members of Congress are expected to reintroduce a version of the bill soon. Calls and e-mails to Feingold's and Conyers' offices for clarification have not been returned.

With no bill apparently active, and with congressional passage certainly not imminent, we find this Obama campaign promise Stalled.