Harmeet Dhillon resigned on Thursday as head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, becoming the first senior Trump administration official to leave since Democrats retook the House and Senate in Tuesday's midterm elections.
Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the departure on X, saying he had accepted her resignation. "Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months," Blanche wrote. "She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor. The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors."
Dhillon, a conservative attorney and Trump loyalist, was nominated by President Donald Trump in December 2024 and confirmed by the Senate in April 2025. Bloomberg Law reported that she had told allies she planned to leave the department after the midterm elections, and she had previously said she intended to return to her California firm, Dhillon Law Group. No successor has been named.
During her 18 months in charge, Dhillon radically reshaped the division, which was created nearly 70 years ago to enforce civil rights laws. NPR reported that she pushed out roughly 300 attorneys and replaced them with ideological allies, shifting the division's focus from combating discrimination against racial minorities and investigating local police departments to conservative priorities: defending gun rights, combating antisemitism on college campuses, opposing what the administration calls "gender ideology extremism," and fighting purported anti-Christian bias. The division also sued dozens of states demanding they turn over voter information, accused universities and law schools of discriminating against white and Asian students, and sued UCLA and Harvard for allegedly allowing antisemitism to flourish on campus.
Former Civil Rights Division attorneys were sharply critical of her tenure. "Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history," said Stacey Young, a former division attorney who now leads Justice Connection, a group supporting department employees. "Dhillon wielded the enormous power of the Justice Department to threaten universities, state and local officials, and election workers in spurious cases that rarely won in court."
Bloomberg Law reported that former officials expect more top political appointees to exit during the lame-duck period before the new Congress takes office. The department also disclosed in a court filing on Thursday that Henry Whitaker, a veteran litigator and key aide in the attorney general's office, "is imminently leaving the government for another opportunity."
