Harmeet Dhillon described her own agenda to the Federalist Society after her appointment: not slowing down civil rights enforcement but "turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction."
She has done exactly that. In one year as head of the Civil Rights Division she dropped federal oversight of police departments with documented discrimination histories. The office that once defended affirmative action is now investigating universities to eliminate it. Her staff is suing states to acquire voter databases - targeting the same minority voters whose ballot access the division once went to federal court to protect.
She terminated dozens of consent decrees for police departments and school districts with records of racial discrimination. Her explanation: removing "barriers to government acting efficiently." A former federal prosecutor who teaches at Loyola Law School offered a cleaner read: "We don't really have a traditional civil rights division anymore. Civil rights have been turned on their head."
The Civil Rights Division was created in 1957. It has around 300 attorneys. Its founding mandate was enforcing anti-discrimination law for racial, sexual, and religious minorities and protecting voting rights.
Dhillon calls this "zooming out." A Laurie Levenson calls it the darkest days in the division's history. Mark Rosenbaum, who spent decades at the ACLU in Los Angeles, put it plainly: "The civil rights division was an ally of the most vulnerable groups in America and, now, it's an enemy."
Pam Bondi is out. Dhillon posted Friday: "Stay tuned - great things ahead at the DOJ." The Civil Rights Division is the warm-up act.
Meet the woman who thinks civil rights went too far.
Harmeet Dhillon has spent a year trying to turn the Justice Department in the opposite direction. Now the online right wants to see her as attorney general.
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