Trump names California Republican Harmeet Dhillon for top civil rights post

Julia Wick, Los Angeles Times on Dec 11, 2024

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Harmeet Dhillon — one of California's most prominent Republican Party operatives, a cultural crusader against "woke" politics and a fervent champion of President-elect Donald Trump — was named Monday by Trump to a top civil rights post in the U.S. Department of Justice.

If confirmed, Dhillon would be the second woman to lead the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, following President Biden's choice of longtime civil rights lawyer Kristen Clarke. The office is tasked with enforcing federal civil rights laws across a wide swath of American life.

A frequent commentator on conservative media, Dhillon has long been one of the most charismatic figures in the California GOP. She made an unsuccessful but closely watched play for Republican National Committee chair in 2023.

"Harmeet Dhillon is very conservative and hardly a champion of civil rights as it is generally understood," legal scholar and UC Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky said by email Tuesday. "She was very active in challenging COVID restrictions. She has filed suits when conservatives claim their speech was restricted. She has challenged protection of transgender students. But there is nothing in her record about fighting discrimination based on race or sex or sexual orientation or gender identity."

Dhillon has been an ardent defender of Trump and represented him in some of his legal cases. Some of her other high-profile cases include that of California teen Chloe Cole, a right-winger who has emerged as a face of the "detransition" movement, and failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.

"Throughout her career, Harmeet has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers," Trump said in a statement.

Dhillon declined to speak for this article when reached by phone Tuesday.

Priorities in the Justice Department change under every administration, but Dhillon running the department's Civil Rights Division would mark a particularly strong contrast to the Biden era.

"This is one of those situations where elections really matter: It's not just the attorney general, it's all of these other high-powered positions within the Department of Justice that really set the policy. Because when it comes to laws, the story doesn't begin and end with passing a law — it's about which laws to bring suits under, it's about which laws you're going to make a priority to enforce," said Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School.

Levinson said that, for example, Americans would probably see fewer suits brought under the Voting Rights Act in a Dhillon-run civil rights office.

"There's nothing meek or mild or moderate about Harmeet Dhillon," said Jon Fleischman, a Republican campaign strategist and former executive director of the California GOP who praised the appointment. "The same street fighter that wanted to be the chairman of Republicans in ultra-liberal San Francisco is going to take on the liberal establishment of the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department."

Dhillon was born in India and raised in rural Northern California. Her ascent in Republican Party politics began in San Francisco, where she has long lived and first served as chair of the local chapter of the GOP. She later rose to the No. 2 position in the state party and still represents California on the Republican National Committee.

She also founded the nonprofit Center for American Liberty in 2018, which advocates "against anti-free speech and anti-civil liberties trends," according to the organization's website.

Some civil rights advocates sharply criticized Trump's choice.

"It's petrifying. She is about as extreme a choice as you could have for this role," said Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur (D-Los Angeles), an attorney with a long background in environmental law and LGBTQ+ civil rights advocacy. "Having her in charge of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department is just astonishing, given her long history of opposition to everything that the division is charged with protecting."

In the past, Dhillon has also taken flak from conservative activists because she donated to Vice President Kamala Harris in a San Francisco district attorney race and once served on the board of the American Civil Liberties Union's Bay Area chapter. Dhillon has said that Harris was the more conservative of the candidates in the district attorney's race and that she got involved in the ACLU after some Sikhs faced abuse in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.