Harmeet Dhillon resigns as head of Justice Department's Civil Rights Division after 18 months

Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, resigned on Thursday, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced. "Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months," Blanche wrote in a post on X. "She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favour. The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors."

Dhillon's tenure was marked by a significant departure of employees from the Civil Rights Division, with more than 75% of its staff leaving last year. She also shifted many of the division's traditional priorities, which had focused on addressing discrimination against historically marginalized and vulnerable communities. After taking charge of the division, often described as the DOJ's 'crown jewel', Dhillon redirected its focus towards other issues, including protecting gun owners' rights, restricting the use of diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, and pursuing legal positions opposing civil rights protections for transgender people.

Under her leadership, the Justice Department closed numerous cases involving discrimination against Black Americans. It also announced the dismissal of more than 50 longstanding consent decrees with public schools, many located in the Deep South, that had been established to protect Black students against unlawful discrimination. Last year, Dhillon also cancelled two pending consent decrees involving the Minneapolis and Louisville Police Departments.

The agreements followed investigations into systemic abuses conducted after the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. She also withdrew investigative findings of misconduct involving six other police departments. Earlier this year, immigration agents fatally shot American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis while they were protesting the administration's immigration crackdown. The Civil Rights Division did not initially launch criminal civil rights investigations, despite longstanding practice in high-profile shootings involving law enforcement officers.

The division eventually became involved in the Pretti case after the Justice Department faced significant criticism and questions over why Homeland Security Investigations, rather than the FBI, was leading an investigation into its own agency. No charges have been filed in the Pretti case so far. State officials are also conducting a separate investigation.

Stacey Young, a former Civil Rights Division attorney who established the nonprofit advocacy group Justice Connection, criticised Dhillon's leadership in a statement on Thursday. “The most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history” "Americans' civil rights don't enforce themselves. For almost 70 years, the Civil Rights Division brought to fruition the civil rights laws that Americans demanded. Dhillon decimated it."

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Who is Harmeet Dhillon?

A close ally of President Trump, Dhillon previously operated her own law firm in San Francisco for several years. She is also a frequent guest on conservative podcasts and regularly posts on social media. Unlike previous leaders of the division, Dhillon frequently used X to share videos about the work being carried out by her office. In media interviews, she acknowledged that social media posts often provided ideas for potential civil rights investigations.

She also broke with traditional practices by publicly announcing the launch of certain civil rights investigations online. Additionally, she distributed challenge coins to fellow Justice Department attorneys featuring the phrase "FAFO" ("f*** around and find out"). Voting rights emerged as one of the most prominent areas of focus during her tenure.

Under Dhillon, the Civil Rights Division filed 31 lawsuits, primarily against Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, seeking access to unredacted voter rolls. Division lawyers repeatedly maintained that the information was necessary to ensure states complied with two federal voting laws requiring the maintenance of accurate voter lists.

However, they subsequently acknowledged in court that the Justice Department intended to share the information with the Department of Homeland Security for criminal and immigration enforcement purposes. The Justice Department has lost 27 of those cases so far. During Tuesday's midterm elections, the Civil Rights Division deployed more than 1,000 monitors to polling locations nationwide, marking a record deployment.

The effort required the Justice Department to seek volunteers from departments that had not traditionally participated in the programme, including the Bureau of Prisons and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In recent weeks, however, Dhillon appeared to have a reduced role in the election monitoring effort. She was absent from a Justice Department election integrity briefing for journalists. Meanwhile, according to a September 10 memo reviewed by CBS News, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, which does not oversee civil rights matters, sought volunteers to serve as election monitors.