SF Attorney Harmeet Dhillon Resigns as DOJ Civil Rights Chief

San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon resigned Thursday as Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, concluding a 19-month tenure that reshaped federal civil rights enforcement and saw wide-scale turnover among career division attorneys.

Planned Departure Following Midterm Election Monitoring

Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed Dhillon's resignation on Thursday, praising her work leading the division since her Senate confirmation in April 2025 after being nominated in December 2024. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) chair Andrea J. Lucas also commended Dhillon's inter-agency partnership with the EEOC.

According to reporting by KTVU FOX 2 and ABC7 News, Dhillon informed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles approximately 3 weeks before Tuesday's midterm elections of her plan to step down after the vote and return to private practice in California. Her departure came days after she oversaw a nationwide deployment of Justice Department election monitors across all 50 states. Dhillon is the second Senate-confirmed Justice Department official to leave the administration this autumn, following Office of Legislative Affairs head Patrick Davis in October.

Division Turnover and Bay Area Investigations

During Dhillon's tenure, the Civil Rights Division redirected enforcement priorities toward challenging diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, reviewing university admissions, and examining school district policies—including a September review of UC San Francisco's medical school admissions and a June Title IX compliance review of the San Francisco Unified School District.

The policy shift triggered substantial staff departures: approximately 300 career attorneys—more than three-quarters of the division's legal workforce—left the Civil Rights Division after more than 200 former division staffers signed a 2025 letter criticizing the reorganization, while Dhillon recruited more than 130 new lawyers to fill vacancies. Stacey Young, executive director of the DOJ alumni group Justice Connection, and the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights criticized the division's direction, while UC Santa Cruz professor Nolan Higdon noted that Dhillon consistently advanced the administration's legal agenda.

Return to San Francisco's Dhillon Law Group

Dhillon founded the Dhillon Law Group on Post Street in San Francisco in 2006 and later established the nonprofit Center for American Liberty in Pittsburgh. Earlier in her career, she served on the board of the Northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) following the events of Sept. 11, 2001, chaired the San Francisco Republican Party, and ran for chair of the Republican National Committee in January 2023 against incumbent Ronna McDaniel.