Harmeet Dhillon has resigned as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Attorney General Todd Blanche said Thursday. Blanche said he accepted the resignation of the assistant attorney general, who had led the division for 18 months. CBS News reported that Dhillon told President Donald Trump in her resignation letter she planned to leave after the midterm elections.
In a post on X, Blanche praised Dhillon for defending civil liberties and enforcing the law, and thanked her for her public service. White House spokesperson Lauren Bis also praised her work and said the administration was grateful for her service.
A sharply changed civil rights agenda
Dhillon shifted the division’s priorities toward gun owners’ rights, challenging diversity, equity and inclusion policies at universities, and opposing civil rights protections for transgender people. In her resignation letter, she highlighted efforts to end what she called unlawful DEI practices and to protect women’s sports.
Her tenure also brought major changes to the division’s enforcement work. More than 75% of its staff departed last year, CBS News reported. The department closed several discrimination cases involving Black Americans and dismissed more than 50 longstanding consent decrees with public schools that had been intended to protect Black students from discrimination.
Dhillon also ended pending consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments and withdrew misconduct findings involving six other departments. The division filed 31 lawsuits seeking access to unredacted voter rolls; the Justice Department had lost 27 of those cases, according to CBS News.
During the midterm elections, the division sent more than 1,000 monitors to polling sites across the country. Dhillon said in her resignation letter that she would continue working for the country after leaving the post.