Harmeet Dhillon resignation as head of DOJ Civil Rights Division, Digi Mart USA News (Washington): Harmeet Dhillon, the Republican attorney who oversaw a major overhaul of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, submitted her resignation Thursday. Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X that he had accepted it.
Blanche wrote that Dhillon “defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor,” and that the DOJ “is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors.” Dhillon posted on X that the job had been the “honor of a lifetime.”
“We ushered in the downfall of illegal DEI, we fought to protect women and girls’ sports, and so much more,” she wrote. Her departure comes two days after Democrats won control of both the House and the Senate in the midterm elections.
Dhillon had a long history of working as an election lawyer for the GOP.
Under Dhillon’s leadership, the Civil Rights Division led some of the Trump administration’s most controversial legal actions, including lawsuits alleging discrimination at elite universities. The division declined to open a use-of-force investigation into the ICE officer who shot and killed Renee Nicole Good in Minnesota earlier this year.
Her office also filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., seeking voter registration lists in the months before the election. Federal judges dismissed 27 of those cases.
Dhillon was a regular presence on conservative media in the run-up to Tuesday’s elections.
Dhillon’s office recently attempted to indict Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump administration official who testified before the House Jan. 6 committee about Trump’s actions during the Capitol siege. It also brought a criminal case against former CNN journalist Don Lemon and protesters over a demonstration at a church in Minnesota, under a statute historically used to protect reproductive rights facilities.
Stacey Young, executive director of the group Justice Connection, called Dhillon “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history.” She said 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,” and called on the incoming Senate to use its advice and consent powers to confirm a successor who will enforce civil rights fairly.
Kristen Clarke, NAACP general counsel and former chief of the Civil Rights Division under the Biden administration, said Dhillon “abdicated her responsibility to enforce our nation’s federal civil rights laws and destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department.” Clarke said the NAACP would demand that her replacement “respect the agency’s sacred mission, enforce the law fairly, and protect our civil rights.”
