The US Justice Department’s civil rights division has undergone a sweeping overhaul under assistant attorney general Harmeet Dhillon, with hundreds of lawyers leaving and enforcement priorities shifting towards President Donald Trump’s agenda, current and former officials say.
Dhillon took charge of the division in April and has argued that its traditional focus had become too narrowly centred on protecting people of colour. She has described that approach as “benevolent racism” and accused the division’s lawyers of pursuing a left-wing agenda.
The changes mark a significant departure from the division’s historic role in tackling discrimination and protecting constitutional rights in voting, housing, employment, education and policing.
Since Trump returned to office, the division has abandoned investigations and withdrawn statements of interest in dozens of cases involving voting rights, racial discrimination and civil actions against anti-abortion activists. It has also ended investigations into police departments accused of constitutional violations.
Voting and education become central battlegrounds
Voting rights have become one of the most active areas of enforcement. The division has sent monitors to observe state primary elections and launched lawsuits seeking voter information from several states, supporting Mr Trump’s focus on alleged election fraud by non-citizens.
Republican and Democratic election officials have accused the department of overreach. Judges have dismissed more than two dozen of its lawsuits, including most recently a case in Georgia.
Education has also emerged as a major focus. In the past two months, the division has accused law schools at the University of California, Berkeley and Duke University, along with medical schools at the University of California, San Francisco and George Washington University, of discriminating against white and Asian applicants.
It has separately sued UCLA and Harvard, alleging that antisemitism was allowed to flourish on campus. A federal judge dismissed the case against Harvard in August, ruling that the alleged incidents were “too isolated and episodic” to establish a violation of civil rights laws.
Dhillon defended the record of the division, saying it had held universities accountable for antisemitic harassment, defended the constitutional rights of Americans of every faith and protected the integrity of federal elections.
“Civil rights laws exist to protect individuals from discrimination, and that is exactly how we enforce them,” she said. “Critics calling equal enforcement ‘weaponization’ are telling on themselves.”
Not every part of the department has changed to the same extent. Officials said sections dealing with housing and disability rights continue much of their traditional work. Last year, for example, the department sued Uber over allegations that it denied rides to passengers using service dogs or wheelchairs.
Departures reshape the Civil Rights Division
The most far-reaching changes have involved the division’s staff. Dhillon encouraged lawyers and employees who did not support her vision to leave, telling broadcaster Glenn Beck: “The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology.”
Up to 80 per cent of staff departed during a period that coincided with cuts by the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to current and former officials. Some employees left or retired early to avoid imposed staff reductions.
About 300 attorneys have left the division since Mr Trump returned to office, officials said. The Justice Department said around 130 had been hired to replace them, meaning lawyers appointed during the second Trump administration now outnumber those retained from earlier administrations.
Christy Lopez, a Georgetown Law professor who worked in the division for more than a decade, said the departures had left it short of expertise and manpower. “There are so few people there doing civil rights work at all,” she said.
Current and former officials also allege that the hiring process has become more politically driven. They said career staff had been removed from a system designed to limit partisan influence, leaving political appointees and ideological allies in the division’s front office with greater control.
The process was introduced after a political hiring scandal during the George W Bush administration, when the division lost about 70 per cent of its attorneys. Under the previous arrangements, career lawyers assessed candidates, conducted interviews and recommended appointments before the attorney general made a final decision.
A Justice Department spokesperson denied that the system had changed. “Career staff hire career staff, just as in prior administrations,” the spokesperson said, describing claims to the contrary as “a deliberate misrepresentation driven by political bias”.
Officials alleged that some new recruits had worked for conservative legal organisations, including the Pacific Legal Foundation and the Only Citizens Vote Coalition, and that many had limited experience in civil rights law.
Dena Robinson, who left the division last year and now works for the ACLU, said Dhillon could have appointed lawyers who supported the president’s priorities while preserving the department’s traditional enforcement work. “But that’s just not happening anymore,” she said.
