Harmeet Dhillon Resigns as Head of DOJ Civil Rights Division After Midterms

Harmeet Dhillon resigned Thursday, Nov. 5, as assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Todd Blanche said. The move ends an approximately 18-month tenure that reshaped one of the department’s most closely watched offices after the midterm elections.

“Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months,” Blanche wrote on X, according to CBS News. “She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor.”

White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said Dhillon did a “fantastic job” and that the White House is “very grateful for her dedicated service,” CBS News reported.

Why is she leaving?

In her resignation letter to President Trump — seen by CBS News — Dhillon said she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she intended to step down after the midterms. Coverage summarized by the Fresno Bee and other outlets said she planned to return to private practice with her San Francisco firm, Dhillon Law Group.

CBS News also reported a competing account from two sources familiar with the matter: that Trump demanded she be fired after watching her Oct. 18 appearance on 60 Minutes discussing election-integrity efforts, and that Justice Department officials stalled so she could resign after Election Day instead. In that interview, Dhillon compared the Trump administration’s noncitizen voting probes with earlier Biden-era prosecution numbers. Those claims about internal White House pressure have not been independently confirmed by Trump in public comments cited in the same report.

How did Dhillon change the Civil Rights Division?

CBS News described a sharp reorientation of a division long focused on discrimination against historically marginalized groups. Under Dhillon, priorities included protecting gun owners’ rights, curbing diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, and opposing certain civil rights protections for transgender people.

Key points from CBS News reporting on her tenure:

• More than 75% of Civil Rights Division staff departed during a mass exodus last year
• The department closed many cases involving discrimination targeting Black Americans and dismissed more than 50 decades-old consent decrees with public schools
• Dhillon nixed pending consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments and rescinded investigative findings involving six other departments
• The division filed 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls from primarily Democratic-led states and D.C.; CBS News said the Justice Department had lost 27 of those cases so far
• For the midterms, the division sent out more than 1,000 election monitors, a record that required volunteers from elsewhere in DOJ, including the Bureau of Prisons and ATF

In her resignation letter, Dhillon touted efforts to end what she called “unlawful and discriminatory DEI practices” and to protect “women and girls’ sports from biological males, including through lawsuits against Minnesota and California,” CBS News reported. “While I am leaving this post, I will continue fighting for our country in the years ahead,” she added.

Criticism and style

Stacey Young, a former Civil Rights Division attorney who founded the nonprofit Justice Connection, called Dhillon “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history” in a Thursday statement quoted by CBS News. “Americans’ civil rights don’t enforce themselves,” Young said. “Dhillon decimated it.”

CBS News also noted Dhillon’s highly public style: frequent posts and videos about division work, announcing some investigations online, and handing out challenge coins printed with “FAFO.” She is a longtime Trump ally who previously ran her San Francisco law practice and appears often on conservative media.

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