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.


Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon sits for a portrait at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington on April 1. | Francis Chung/POLITICO

SAN FRANCISCO — When Harmeet Dhillon cites the “woke ideology” she wants to put in the U.S. Justice Department’s sights, she does so from a personal familiarity perhaps unrivaled in the conservative movement.

Dhillon — a figure likely to emerge with new power from President Donald Trump’s shakeup of the department’s leadership — built her legal career and political identity in San Francisco, where she was a Republican activist vastly outnumbered by Democrats and led a legal revolt against California’s progressive policies in state and federal courts. {snip} “The entirety of my career has been a minority, conservative viewpoint in a very liberal profession,” Dhillon told POLITICO in a recent interview. “I’m not here for a popularity contest.”

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Dhillon gained national notice because she was a local outlier, driving culture-war wedges in California battles over diversity, free speech and Covid closures. She has since run a year-long campaign to transform the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and its place in American society. Dhillon says her vision is not just to slow down progressive civil rights aims but “turning the train around and driving in the opposite direction,” as she told the conservative Federalist Society after her appointment.

Over the last year, she dropped federal oversight of police departments accused of discrimination that was once a staple of the Civil Rights Division’s work. An office that helped defend affirmative action is now investigating universities to snuff it out. Dhillon’s staff is now suing states to acquire voter databases in what activists call an effort to disenfranchise minority voters whose ballot access her office once went to court to defend.

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CLARIFICATION: This article has been updated to reflect that the Dhillon Law Group and Center for American Liberty have separate governance structures.