Harmeet Dhillon, a Donald Trump ally who led the justice department’s civil rights division, is leaving her position.
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months. She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor. The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors,” the attorney general, Todd Blanche, said in a post on X.
Dhillon is the first high-ranking justice department official to leave after the midterm elections in which Democrats took control of Congress. Democrats are expected to use that power to aggressively investigate executive agencies, including the justice department. Dhillon’s departure was first reported by Bloomberg Law.
Dhillon dramatically transformed the civil rights division in a little over a year and a half there, reorienting its mission away from the work it had traditionally done protecting the civil rights of minorities. Under her leadership, the department dropped many cases alleging discrimination against racial minorities in voting, housing, employment and education. Scores of career lawyers also left the division under her leadership, leading to an exodus of expertise of civil rights enforcement.
Dhillon aggressively pursued claims of discrimination at universities, including claims that minorities were unfairly favored in admissions and claims of antisemitism against Jewish students. A whistleblower has said that investigations into the schools were conducted with a predetermined outcome and that lawyers were told to find a reason to file a lawsuit.
The civil rights division also oversaw investigations into the killing of US citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Good by federal agents in Minnesota during an immigration enforcement surge – neither has resulted in criminal charges.
“From day one, Harmeet Dhillon abdicated her responsibility to enforce our nation’s federal civil rights laws and destroyed the crown jewel of the justice department,” said Kristen Clarke, who led the civil rights division under Joe Biden and is now general counsel at the NAACP.
“Instead of protecting the civil rights of all Americans, she abandoned cases, purged the work force and weaponized the division to target institutions to achieve illegitimate, partisan goals.”
The division also had some high-profile failures under Dhillon’s watch. It sued more than two dozen states for voter roll information and lost every single case. Several of the judges who ruled against the department were appointed by Donald Trump,
“Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless and hateful head of the civil rights division in DoJ history,” said Stacey Young, a former civil rights division lawyer who now leads the group Justice Connection, a group for justice department alumni.
She added: “After she upended the division’s mission-critical work, the civil servants who dedicated their careers to protecting vulnerable communities were instead told to target them – and more than three-quarters of the division’s lawyers left. Dhillon wielded the enormous power of the justice department to threaten universities, state and local officials, and election workers in spurious cases that rarely won in court.”
A prolific poster on X, Dhillon would sometimes reveal civil rights investigations on the platform, a move that startled longtime justice department lawyers because the department has a longstanding practice of not speaking publicly about investigations. She has also publicly used a slur for people with disabilities, whose civil rights her division is charged with protecting. She has also described conservative influencers as “hoes”.
Dhillon grew up in Smithfield, North Carolina, after being born in India and then living in the UK and New York. “There were Klan signs on the highway where I grew up. I’m used to being an outsider. My superpower is not really caring what people think about me,” she told the Dartmouth alumni magazine last year.
Before joining the government, Dhillon ran her own law firm and was vice-chair of the California GOP. After the 2020 election, she worked on lawsuits contesting the election results.
