Justice Department civil rights head Harmeet Dhillon resigns

Harmeet Dhillon, who has led the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division since April 2025, resigned on Nov. 5.

Attorney General Todd Blanche publicly announced her departure, and Dhillon confirmed she'd submitted a resignation letter.

Dhillon said told USA TODAY in a text message that "these jobs are tough" and said she informed Blanche in her letter that she'd "accomplished what I came to do."

"It was just time," Dhillon said of her decision. She cited a grueling schedule following the death of her husband and her father in the lead-up to the 2024 election and said she would be returning to private practice.

It's the first major resignation from the DOJ since Republicans suffered massive losses in this week's midterms, ushering in Democratic congressional committee control next year that could heighten scrutiny of the department's actions.

Blanche praised Dhillon's work in a Nov. 5 post on X, saying she had "defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor."

The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.

Since 2025, the Trump administration has cleared out most of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division's previous lawyers. Dhillon said on a Breitbart News podcast in August 2025 that about 75% of its lawyers – about 300 out of 400 – had left in the first seven months of the new administration.

Dhillon led an effort to redirect the division's efforts.

Since Trump retook office, the DOJ has dropped lawsuits brought under President Joe Biden that accused police departments in Louisville and Minneapolis of violating civil rights, and abandoned agreements that governed policing practices in those departments going forward.

The Civil Rights Division under Dhillon has instead focused on investigating potential racial preferences in employment and university admissions, religious liberty issues and local limitations on gun ownership.

Dhillon also directed efforts by the DOJ to obtain sensitive state voter information ahead of the midterms, but it lost in court more than two dozen times.

Some have criticized those shifts under the current administration.

"For almost 70 years, the Civil Rights Division brought to fruition the civil rights laws that Americans demanded. Dhillon decimated it," Stacey Young, a former senior trial attorney at the Civil Rights Division who now leads Justice Connection, which supports people who have left or been forced out of the DOJ, said in a statement.

“Instead of protecting the civil rights of all Americans, (Dhillon) abandoned cases, purged the work force and weaponized the Division to target institutions to achieve illegitimate, partisan goals," NAACP General Counsel Kristen Clarke, who headed the DOJ's Civil Rights Division from 2021 to 2025, said in a statement.

This story has been updated with additional information.