GOP Poised To Confirm Anti-Voting Rights Extremist To Lead DOJ's Civil Rights Division

WASHINGTON — The Senate is on the verge of confirming Harmeet Dhillon to lead the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, putting someone who has spent years attacking voting rights, abortion rights and LGBTQ rights in charge of protecting those rights for millions of Americans.

Republicans advanced Dhillon’s nomination on Wednesday, clearing a procedural hurdle in a 52-45 vote along party lines. Dhillon now awaits a Thursday vote to be confirmed, which, barring something extraordinary, is all but certain given that no GOP senators have raised concerns with her.

Dhillon, a far-right conservative attorney and former California Republican Party official, has been President Donald Trump’s legal adviser for the last four years. During his 2020 campaign, she perpetuated his lie that the election was stolen from him due to widespread voter fraud, which did not exist. She did TV interviews falsely claiming there was persistent voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a state that Trump legitimately lost to Joe Biden.

Her law firm, Dhillon Law Group, over the years has filed more than a dozen lawsuits across eight states aimed at challenging voting rights, election processes or the ability of Trump to appear on 2024 ballots in states that disqualified him because of his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.

Dhillon’s firm also submitted amicus briefs on behalf of conservative groups in cases before the Supreme Court: one in support of a racially discriminatory Alabama congressional map and another in support of the far-right independent state legislature theory. Both cases were struck down by the court.

As recently as October 2024, Dhillon falsely claimed the results of the 2020 election were the result of a “wholesale ignoring of laws passed by legislatures.”

Dhillon has also directly attacked the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the landmark law that prohibits racial discrimination in voting — which she will now be in charge of enforcing, if confirmed. She’s called a congressional effort to restore part of the law that was struck down in Shelby County v. Holder — a 2013 Supreme Court decision that has allowed states with a history of voter discrimination to pass new voting laws without federal oversight — an “unnecessary power grab” based on “false propaganda about ‘voting rights.’”

“Where’s the suppression?” she wondered in a 2021 Fox News op-ed in which she dismissed the negative effects of the Shelby County v. Holder decision.

During Dhillon’s Senate confirmation hearing in late February, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) pressed her on how she would decide when to sue over state laws that discriminate against voters.

Hirono gave examples of former U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland filing lawsuits under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, in one case in response to a state law prohibiting civil rights groups from passing out water to people standing in line to vote. In another case, Garland filed suit against a state law limiting counties’ use of absentee ballot drop boxes.

“There are a number of these kinds of voting rights laws that the states enacted after Shelby County, and in fact, 13 states very immediately passed all kinds of laws that made it a lot tougher to vote,” said Hirono, referring to states that closed 1,688 polling stations within six years of the court decision. “How are you going to decide which ones to go after? I mean, these obviously have the effect of discrimination against certain groups, making it harder to vote.”

Dhillon said she disagreed with the premise of the senator’s question that “all of these measures that Georgia and other states took to improve confidence of all citizens in voting in fact had any form of discriminatory impact.”

Hirono interjected, with dismay: “That is the crux, isn’t it, as to whether or not these laws have an anti-discriminatory effect? And you obviously do not think so.”

Dhillon’s record on reproductive rights is also terrible, as is her record on LGBTQ rights. She uses inflammatory language when talking about either of these issues. She’s said she opposes abortion rights because she doesn’t support “killing children in the womb.” And when it comes to transgender people’s rights, she’s referred to doctors who provide gender-affirming care as “butchers” and “predatory” who are “pushing trans lies.”

In her free time, Dhillon has fueled dangerous conspiracy theories and in 2018 founded a nonprofit legal group, the Center for American Liberty, that curiously claims to defend the “civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights legacy organizations.”

One of its featured clients is Andy Ngo, a far-right influencer who the Southern Poverty Law Center once described as “publishing anti-antifa, Islamophobic and transphobic tweets and articles to his sizable Twitter following, along with disseminating the arrest records and personal details of left-wing demonstrators.”

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an actual civil rights coalition that represents more than 240 national organizations, has been urging senators to oppose Dhillon’s nomination for all the reasons listed above.

“Ms. Dhillon’s lack of independence and record of going after the rights of the very people that she would have the duty to defend is disqualifying,” the group said in a letter delivered to senators in mid-March.

“We deserve an assistant attorney general who will work for all of us and who has a record of protecting and advancing the rights of all people in America,” they wrote. “Unfortunately, Ms. Dhillon’s record and her statements at the hearing demonstrate she is not fit for this role. We strongly urge the Senate to oppose her confirmation.”

The letter is signed by organizations including the AFL-CIO, the Human Rights Campaign, the NAACP, the National Women’s Law Center and People for the American Way.