Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, accompanied by staff, speaks during a press conference at the Department of Justice September 29, 2025 in Washington, DC. Dhillon resigned Thursday.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images North America
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Andrew Harnik/Getty Images North America
The head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Harmeet Dhillon, is out after a tumultuous 18 months on the job.
Dhillon is the first senior department official to leave the Trump administration since Democrats regained control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announces Dhillon’s departure from X.
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who has led the Civil Rights Division with conviction over the past 18 months. She has defended the civil liberties of all Americans 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,” he wrote.
During his tenure, Dhillion radically reshaped the Civil Rights Division, eliminating approximately 300 attorneys, hiring inexperienced ideological allies to replace them, and using the division’s coercive powers to advance President Trump’s MAGA agenda.
The changes marked a sea change for the Civil Rights Division, created about 70 years ago during the movement to end racial segregation in the United States. For decades, she has fought to protect the constitutional rights of all Americans in every aspect of life, from housing and employment to education and policing.
Dhillon, a conservative lawyer and Trump loyalist, came to office with a different view. In her eyes, the division was only protecting the rights of people of color, and she quickly turned to aggressively pursuing conservative priorities.
“We are not just slowing down the awakening,” she said at a Federalist Society event in 2025. “We are championing the cause to achieve the goals of the executive branch.”
Under his leadership, the division redirected its energies to enforcing Trump’s executive orders, including ending alleged radical indoctrination in schools, defending women against “ideological gender extremism” and combating anti-Semitism and alleged anti-Christian bias.
As the midterm elections approach, the Civil Rights Division has sued dozens of states demanding they provide voter information — following Trump’s claims of voter fraud.
Election officials backed down and the courts threw out the department’s lawsuits.
The division also accused numerous universities and law schools of discriminating against white and Asian students, and sued UCLA and Harvard for allegedly allowing anti-Semitism to flourish on campuses.
Many Civil Rights Division veterans say Dhillon’s view of the unit and its mission is a perversion of
“Harmeet Dhillon was the most destructive, lawless and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,” said Stacey Young, a former attorney for the division. “Dhillon used the enormous power of the Justice Department to threaten universities, state and local officials, and election workers in bogus cases that rarely won in court.”
“Americans’ civil rights do not self-enforce. For nearly 70 years, the Civil Rights Division pushed through the civil rights laws that Americans demanded. Dhillon decimated it,” said Young, who now leads Justice Connection, a department alumni group that supports DOJ employees.
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