Harmeet Dhillon quits as Trump's civil rights chief. Her DOJ lost 27 of 31 voter-roll lawsuits.
The attorney general announced the resignation two days after Democrats won Congress. No successor has been named.
Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump appointee who ran the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, resigned Thursday, two days after Democrats won control of Congress.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation on X. He wrote that Dhillon "led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months," MS NOW reported. No successor has been named.
The division enforces federal anti-discrimination laws, with sections covering voting and employment. Under Dhillon, it drove the administration's election push.
What she leaves behind
According to CBS News:
- The division filed 31 lawsuits, mostly against Democratic-led states and D.C., demanding unredacted voter rolls. The department has lost 27 of them, and its lawyers later admitted in court that the data was meant to be shared with the Department of Homeland Security for criminal and immigration enforcement.
- More than 75% of the division's staff left last year.
- The department sent a record of more than 1,000 poll monitors to polling places for the midterms, recruiting volunteers from agencies including the Bureau of Prisons and the ATF.
- It dropped more than 50 decades-old school desegregation consent decrees, many in the Deep South, and ended pending consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments.
Courts kept pushing back on that election work. On Election Day, Judge Tanya Chutkan blocked the administration from sending its "noncitizen" voter lists to states. The NAACP went to court to keep federal agents off DOJ's poll-monitor teams.
Why she's leaving
In her resignation letter, Dhillon wrote that she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she would step down after the midterms, CBS reported. MS NOW, citing multiple sources, reported she was frustrated at being passed over for a promotion and kept out of leading the election cases.
Stacey Young, a former division attorney who now runs the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection, called her "the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history." Kristen Clarke, NAACP general counsel, said Dhillon "abandoned cases, purged the work force and weaponized the Division."
What's next
The administration hasn't said who will run the division. Whoever it is will face a Congress that Democrats now control starting in January.
Sources
- Harmeet Dhillon, controversial head of Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, resigns (CBS News)
- Harmeet Dhillon, chief of DOJ civil rights division, resigns (MS NOW)
- Civil Rights Division (U.S. Department of Justice)
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