New chief vows radical reshape

Harmeet Dhillon took over as chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division last April and vowed to radically reshape the storied unit and its mission.

Hundreds of attorneys pushed out

Over the past eighteen months, Dhillon has pushed out hundreds of longtime attorneys and replaced many with inexperienced ideological allies, according to four current and former division officials.

Division's historic mission

Created almost seventy years ago during the movement to end racial segregation, the Civil Rights Division historically sought to combat discrimination and protect constitutional rights in voting, housing, employment, education and policing.

Dhillon's critique of past work

Dhillon argues the division's mission narrowed to protecting rights of people of color, creating what she calls benevolent racism designed to punish descendants of historical oppressors.

“As the logic goes, the white oppressors of years past kept Brown and Black people down, why not give them a taste of their own medicine?”

Dropped cases and investigations

Since Trump returned to office in twenty twenty-five, the division has dropped investigations and withdrawn statements in dozens of cases involving voting rights, racial discrimination and civil actions against anti-abortion activists.

Aggressive voting rights focus

The division has sent monitors to states' primary elections and filed lawsuits demanding voter information from multiple states in furtherance of Trump's focus on alleged election fraud by noncitizens.

Courts reject election lawsuits

State election officials, Republican and Democratic, have pushed back accusing the Justice Department of overreach. Judges have tossed more than two dozen of the department's lawsuits, including most recently in Georgia.

Universities accused of discrimination

In the past two months, the Civil Rights Division accused law schools at University of California, Berkeley and Duke University and medical schools at University of California, San Francisco and George Washington University of discriminating…

Harvard antisemitism lawsuit dismissed

In August, a federal judge dismissed the department's lawsuit against Harvard, finding the claims of antisemitism were too isolated and episodic to prove the school was violating civil rights laws.

Mass exodus of experienced staff

Up to eighty percent of the division staff departed in a wave that decimated institutional knowledge.Some three hundred attorneys have left since Trump returned to office, with only one hundred thirty hired to replace them.

Hiring process bypasses career staff

Current and former officials say Dhillon changed hiring to bypass rules put in place two decades ago after a Bush administration scandal. Political appointees now lead hiring rather than career attorneys reviewing candidates.

New hires lack civil rights experience

Most attorneys hired lack experience in civil rights work. Some have little legal experience at all. Many previously worked for conservative legal groups including the Pacific Legal Foundation and Only Citizens Vote Coalition.

Division left shorthanded and depleted

The division is now shorthanded, depleted of talent, expertise and basic manpower. There are now more division attorneys hired during the second Trump administration than holdovers from previous administrations.

“There are so few people there doing civil rights work at all.”