Harmeet Dhillon, the political appointee overseeing the transformation of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, recounted when division attorneys were asked earlier this year to join the Trump administration’s antisemitism task force, just three out of nearly 400 volunteered.
“That set the tone as to what I could expect,” Dhillon, who was sworn in last month, said Wednesday at a Federalist Society conference in Washington. “On what should clearly be a bipartisan non-controversial issue, hundreds of lawyers in the DOJ simply decided they weren’t going to raise their hands and help with that.”
Now a month into her tenure, more than 200 attorneys have left the department and opted to take the administration’s deferred resignation offer, Dhillon said. Over two-thirds of the division, typically staffed with roughly 380 lawyers, have left or been reassigned since President Donald Trump took office, according to people familiar with the situation.
“I would have loved for all of the lawyers in civil rights, and all of the paraprofessionals, to roll up their sleeves and get to work with me,” Dhillon said. “But a lot of lawyers didn’t want to do that.”
Dhillon, a San Francisco lawyer who previously represented Trump in his personal capacity, is known for arguing conservative positions in cases involving religious liberty, treatment for transgender minors, and censorship on college campuses
She has overseen a stark realignment of division priorities, moving to focus its resources toward conservative issues, including anti-Christian bias and gun rights. Established in 1957 during the civil rights movement, the division has historically enforced anti-discrimination laws in voting, education, housing, and other areas.
Former civil rights officials have described the shift as a shocking departure from the division’s prior work and a signal that the department, which has in the past operated independently from the White House, is taking cues from Trump and his ideological goals.
Closing out the conservative legal association’s all-day conference on executive branch review, Dhillon called for a “paradigm shift” at the unit and described a “generational opportunity for a reformation within civil rights.”
She outlined her priorities for the division as fighting against racial quotas, blocking transgender women from participating in women’s sports teams, and protecting Jewish students on college campuses, among other missions, which align with new mission statements that were recently sent to the division’s sections.
The Justice Department’s antisemitism task force, announced in early February and led by California civil rights lawyer Leo Terrell, will focus on fighting antisemitism on college campuses.
The “usual approach” under past Republican administrations has been to try to “slow the train down,” Dhillon said.
“There really hasn’t been a focus on turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction, and that’s my vision of the DOJ civil rights,” Dhillon said. “We don’t just slow down the woke. We take up the cause to achieve the executive branch’s goals.”
She also previewed plans to hire more lawyers to replace career staff that has resigned in recent months, saying she has “more applicants than I can possibly hire right now.”
To contact the reporter on this story:
To contact the editors responsible for this story: