Justice Department's Civil Rights Division Has Lost 300 Attorneys Since Trump Returned, NPR Finds

When Harmeet Dhillon took over the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division last April, the conservative attorney vowed to radically reshape the storied unit and its mission. Eighteen months later, four current and former division officials told NPR, she has made good on that promise: pushing out hundreds of longtime attorneys, replacing many with inexperienced ideological allies, and using the division's enforcement powers to advance President Trump's agenda. Three of the officials spoke anonymously for fear of retribution.

Created almost 70 years ago during the movement to end racial segregation, the division has historically combated discrimination and protected constitutional rights in areas from voting and housing to employment, education and policing. Dhillon, who was born in India and immigrated to the U.S. as a child, argues its mission narrowed over the years to protecting only people of color, a form of what she calls "benevolent racism." Speaking to the Federalist Society last November, she said that logic amounts to telling the descendants of oppressors, "why not give them a taste of their own medicine?"

Since Trump returned to office, the division has dropped investigations and withdrawn statements of interest in dozens of cases, including voting rights, racial discrimination and actions against anti-abortion activists. It has ended investigations into police departments over alleged constitutional violations. On voting, it has sent monitors to primaries and filed lawsuits demanding voter information from many states, backing Trump's focus on alleged election fraud by noncitizens. Election officials of both parties have accused the department of overreach, and judges have tossed more than two dozen of its lawsuits, most recently in Georgia.

Education is another front. In the past two months the division has accused law schools at the University of California, Berkeley and Duke University, and medical schools at UC San Francisco and George Washington University, of discriminating against white and Asian applicants. It has also sued UCLA and Harvard over alleged antisemitism. In August a federal judge dismissed the Harvard case, finding the claims "too isolated and episodic" to show a civil rights violation.

The staffing numbers are stark. Up to 80% of division staff left in a wave of departures that officials say has gutted institutional knowledge, much of it during the Department of Government Efficiency cuts. Roughly 300 attorneys have left since Trump returned, according to current and former officials, and the Justice Department says about 130 have been hired. More division attorneys were hired during Trump's second term than are holdovers from earlier administrations. "There are so few people there doing civil rights work at all," said Christy Lopez, a Georgetown Law professor who spent more than a decade in the division.

Officials also accuse Dhillon of changing the hiring process. After a George W. Bush-era scandal over political hiring, in which the division lost about 70% of its attorneys, career staff were given a leading role in reviewing resumes, interviewing candidates and recommending hires. Under Dhillon, current and former officials say, the political front office has taken the lead. Some recent hires previously worked for conservative legal groups including the Pacific Legal Foundation and Only Citizens Vote Coalition, and most have little civil rights experience.

A Justice Department spokesperson denied any change, saying, "Career staff hire career staff, just as in prior administrations," and calling the contrary claim "a deliberate misrepresentation driven by political bias." The spokesperson said the 130 new attorneys are outstanding, many having clerked for federal judges. Dena Robinson, who left the division last year and now works at the ACLU, said the problem is that the new focus has crowded out the old: "That's just not happening anymore."