WASHINGTON – President-elect Donald Trump has tapped Harmeet Dhillon, a Republican attorney known for championing conservative causes and the Republican National Committeewoman for California, to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division.
Trump announced Dhillon’s appointment as assistant attorney general, writing on social media that she has “consistently stood up to protect our cherished civil liberties.” Trump praised Dhillon’s record of taking on big tech companies, her defense of religious freedoms and “calling out companies that use woke policies to discriminate against their workers.”
During the first Trump administration, Dhillon rose to prominence as a Republican advocate in liberal San Francisco. She advocated on behalf of Trump supporters, who said they were attacked by protesters and that their conservative beliefs caused them to be persecuted.
In 2016, she sued the city of San Jose, California, on behalf of Trump supporters who were attacked by counter-protesters, saying the inaction of city officials was “colored by political considerations.”
Dhillon also represented a Google employee who was fired after circulating a memo stating that men are naturally better suited for tech jobs than women due to biological differences. Google linked “overt hostility toward conservative thinking” to discriminatory policies that harm white men, she wrote in a lawsuit against the tech giant.
“The appointment of Harmeet Dhillon to lead this critical civil rights agency is yet another clear sign that this administration is committed to advancing ideological positions on the rights and protections that protect every human being in this country,” said Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership . Civil and Human Rights Conference.
During the Covid pandemic, Dhillon has filed multiple lawsuits challenging California Governor Gavin Newsom’s stay-at-home orders on behalf of business owners who wanted to stay open and religious leaders who wanted to hold services. As opposition to pandemic restrictions grew, Dhillon’s advocacy gained her national media attention and her ties to Trump grew closer.
More recently, Dhillon defended ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson in a gender discrimination lawsuit brought by a former producer. She is currently representing a California woman who is suing Kaiser Permanente over gender-affirming care the woman received as a teenager and later came to regret.
Wiley added: “Dhillon has focused her career on reducing civil rights, rather than enforcing or protecting them. Instead of fighting to expand access to voting rights, she has worked to restrict it.”
In 2020, Dhillon served as co-chair of Lawyers for Trump, a group of conservative lawyers who lent their services to Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. Three years later, she began an unsuccessful effort to replace then-RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel. Most recently, she led the Trump campaign’s election integrity team in Arizona during the 2024 general election.
If confirmed, Dhillon would replace Kristen Clarke, the first Black woman to lead the division. Dhillon’s nomination is itself historic: If confirmed, she would be the first Republican woman to lead the division and the second Indian-American.
Dhillon, a native of India and a practicing Sikh, is also on track to become the first Sikh American to hold the position, which advocacy group The Sikh Coalition described as a “historic event.”
The group added that “an accurate representation of the community is important – including in the halls of power.”
The nomination adds Dhillon to a growing list of Trump’s lawyers and allies tapped for key Justice Department posts: his impeachment lawyer Pam Bondi as attorney general, his criminal defense attorneys Todd Blanche and Emil Bove as her immediate deputies, and his appellate attorney D. John Sauer as attorney general.
Conservative allies have cheered Dhillon’s nomination all week, expressing optimism that she will shift divisions away from the Biden administration’s priorities.
“Under Biden, they took a whole-of-government approach to try to internalize woke DEI policies and impose them on the American people through the DOJ civil rights division,” said Roger Severino, vice president at the conservative Heritage Foundation, which has seven for years as a career attorney in the civil rights division.
“It’s hard to think of anyone better qualified than her to tackle these issues,” he said.
Dhillon’s nomination also received support from Mark Geragos, a prominent criminal defense attorney and Los Angeles Democrat who worked with Dhillon to challenge California’s stay-at-home orders during the pandemic.
“The civil rights division will be better off having her there. Very few people on my side of the aisle would agree with that and I think they would be surprised,” Geragos said in an interview with NBC News.
In addition to her personal work for Trump, members of Dhillon’s firm have also represented the president-elect and his campaign in various legal disputes. David Warrington, a partner at Dhillon Law Group and general counsel for the Trump campaign, was named last week as Trump’s pick for White House counsel. Warrington has also represented Trump in civil lawsuits arising from the January 6 riot.
Most notably, Dhillon and Warrington were part of the legal team that represented candidate Trump during his early 2024 battle to remain on the ballot after the Colorado Supreme Court ruled he was ineligible due to a provision of the 14th Amendment that allowed insurrectionists prohibits him from holding federal office. That dispute went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ultimately issued a unanimous ruling allowing Trump to remain a presidential candidate.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
