Harmeet Dhillon, the head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, resigned Thursday. She oversaw an overhaul of the division that put universities at the center of its enforcement agenda, and she leaves two days after Democrats won control of Congress.
Attorney General Todd Blanche posted on X that he had accepted her resignation. He wrote that she “defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor.” Dhillon called the job the “honor of a lifetime.” Reuters reported that she told the White House in October she planned to leave. She will return to her law firm, The Dhillon Law Group, according to her spokesperson.
Her Record on Higher Education
Under Dhillon, the division shifted away from its traditional focus on voting rights and racial discrimination toward challenging diversity initiatives and investigating antisemitism on college campuses. She led probes of dozens of universities she viewed as too liberal, which helped the administration obtain hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and contributed to the resignation of the University of Virginia’s president.
Dhillon listed accomplishments in a post on X: “We ushered in the downfall of illegal DEI, we fought to protect women and girls’ sports, and so much more.”
The division’s university work has continued in recent weeks. As previously reported, it settled with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in October, with no payment but with federal oversight of admissions, scholarships and student groups. It also found that George Washington University’s and UC San Diego’s medical schools weighed race in admissions, accusations both schools dispute or have not yet answered. Monday, a federal judge dismissed the department’s suit seeking Harvard’s admissions records on procedural grounds, without prejudice. The department says it will file an amended complaint.
Criticism and Mixed Results
Critics sharply condemned her tenure. Stacey Young of the advocacy group Justice Connection called her “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history.” Young said Dhillon wielded the department’s power “to threaten universities, state and local officials, and election workers in spurious cases that rarely won in court.” Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel and the division’s former chief under President Joe Biden, said Dhillon “abandoned cases, purged the work force and weaponized the Division to target institutions to achieve illegitimate, partisan goals.”
Outside higher education, the division sued 30 states and Washington, D.C., for voter registration lists. Federal judges have dismissed 27 of those cases, according to NBC News. Reuters reported that the changes prompted a wave of departures among career staff, and that Dhillon said attorneys in the unit pursued liberal priorities and were unwilling to carry out Trump’s agenda.
Young called on the incoming Senate to “exercise its full advice and consent powers” over the next assistant attorney general. Democrats take control of the chamber in January.
