Civil rights division chief Dhillon resigns in first senior DOJ exit after midterms
Seven Lights
Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, resigned Thursday, becoming the first senior official to leave the department since Democrats swept the midterm elections on Tuesday.
Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a post on X that he had accepted the resignation. Ms. Dhillon “led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months,” he wrote, and “has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor.”
Ms. Dhillon struck a combative note in her own farewell. “We ushered in the downfall of illegal DEI, we fought to protect women and girls’ sports, and so much more,” she wrote on X, using the abbreviation for diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Her tenure was among the most contested in the division’s modern history. She spent it replacing attorneys with others more closely aligned with the administration’s ideology; scores of career lawyers left, and the division dropped many cases alleging discrimination against racial minorities in voting, housing, employment and education, while pursuing claims of reverse discrimination at universities, prosecuting attacks on pregnancy resource centers under the clinic-access act and investigating assaults on houses of worship, including synagogues. She also directed the division to monitor midterm elections in all 50 states, a first.
“She abandoned cases, purged the work force and weaponized the division to target institutions to achieve illegitimate, partisan goals,” said Kristen Clarke, who led the civil rights division under President Biden and is now general counsel at the NAACP. Stacey Young, a former division lawyer who leads a department alumni group, called Ms. Dhillon “the most destructive, lawless and hateful head of the civil rights division in DoJ history.”
Fox News reported that Ms. Dhillon said the White House had asked her to stay on until after the midterm elections and that she departed once the voting was done. The department referred comment to Mr. Blanche’s post.
The resignation leaves the division that enforces voting rights, police-misconduct statutes and hate-crime law without its chief as a new Congress, controlled by Democrats, prepares scrutiny of its litigation. No successor was named Thursday.