‘I Wasn’t Asked to Resign’: Harmeet Dhillon Resigns as Head of Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for about 18 months, resigned Thursday, Nov. 5. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the resignation in a post on X, praising her for leading the division “with conviction.”

She is the first senior official to leave the Trump administration since Tuesday’s midterm elections, in which Democrats won control of the House and Senate, according to The Washington Post. Her tenure remade one of the department’s best-known divisions. Supporters describe it as an overdue correction; critics describe it as dismantling the division.

Why She Left: Two Accounts

Her version. Dhillon told Fox News Digital that the decision was hers and came weeks before the election. “I wasn’t asked to resign,” she said. She said she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles about three weeks before Election Day that she had accomplished what she came to do and wanted to return to private practice, and that Wiles asked her to wait until after the midterms. Forbes, citing The Washington Post, reported that her resignation letter says she informed Wiles in October. She has said she plans to return to her firm, Dhillon Law Group, according to Bloomberg, as cited by The Daily Signal.

The reported backdrop. Other outlets, citing unnamed sources, describe a weakening position. ABC News reported that her exit had long been expected after President Trump privately voiced frustration with the division’s mounting, embarrassing court losses. CNN reported that her control over the division had been slipping for months. Officials told CNN this was partly because of those losses, and partly because colleagues saw her as better at announcing initiatives than carrying them out. CNN also reported that some conservatives complained the division’s newer, less experienced lawyers could not handle cases referred to it. Dhillon did not address those reports in her Fox interview.

Stacey Young, a former division attorney who founded the advocacy group Justice Connection, called Dhillon “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history.”

A Remade Division

New priorities. Dhillon shifted the division toward challenging DEI and race-conscious policies, religious discrimination, transgender athletes in women’s sports, Second Amendment rights and election integrity, Fox News reported. CBS News reported that she moved away from the division’s traditional focus on discrimination against historically marginalized groups. Under her, the department dismissed more than 50 decades-old school desegregation consent decrees, many in the Deep South. Supporters, including The Daily Signal, praised her use of the FACE Act against attacks on pregnancy resource centers, her prosecutions of people who disrupted worship services, and her suits against school policies that let staff withhold a student’s gender identity from parents.

Policing. She dropped pending consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments and rescinded misconduct findings against six other departments, CBS News reported. After immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, during protests in Minneapolis earlier this year, the division did not initially open criminal civil rights investigations, breaking with long-standing practice. It later joined the Pretti case under public pressure.

Voting. The division sued 31 jurisdictions, mostly Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, for unredacted voter rolls. Department lawyers later acknowledged in court that the data would be shared with the Department of Homeland Security for criminal and immigration enforcement. The department has lost 27 of those cases, CBS News reported. On Election Day, the division deployed more than 1,000 poll monitors, a record.

Staffing and style. More than 75% of the division’s staff left during her tenure, according to ABC News, which cited staffing figures provided to Congress. Dhillon told Fox she recruited more than 130 lawyers. She announced some investigations on social media, a break from past practice, and said in interviews that social media posts sometimes inspired them, CBS reported.

Reactions

Critics. Stacey Young, a former division attorney who founded the advocacy group Justice Connection, called Dhillon “the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,” HuffPost reported. Young argued that ending police investigations and consent decrees left communities less safe, according to The Hill. Kristen Clarke, who led the division under President Biden and is now NAACP general counsel, said Dhillon had “destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department,” ABC News reported. Former division staff also published an open letter criticizing her leadership last December, The Hill noted.

Supporters. Blanche said Dhillon had defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor. Conservatives had argued from the start that the division had become ideologically tilted under previous administrations and needed redirecting, Fox News reported. Dhillon described the overhaul to Fox as finished work: the goal was to change the division, she said, and that was done.

What’s Next

Dhillon was born in 1969 in Chandigarh, India. Before joining the administration she founded Dhillon Law Group in San Francisco and the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit litigating civil liberties cases, Axios reported. She built a national profile in First Amendment and election law cases. A longtime Republican Party official, she was vice chair of the California Republican Party and served as Republican National Committeewoman for California from 2016 until she joined the Justice Department.

Trump nominated her in December 2024, and she was sworn in in April 2025 after Senate confirmation. She told Fox News that she moved to Washington after the deaths of her husband and her father.

With Democrats taking control of Congress in January, Dhillon was asked whether she would testify if subpoenaed. She told Fox that executive privilege would limit what she could discuss and that she would follow legal counsel.