WASHINGTON — The U.S. Division of Justice civil rights division was created in 1957 with an preliminary give attention to combating racial inequality and defending voting rights.
However within the first two years of President Trump’s second time period, its mission has been reimagined.
Now, the division is concentrated on combating variety initiatives, rolling again pro-transgender insurance policies and rooting out allegations of election fraud.
It had for many years investigated police departments for utilizing extreme drive. Now it investigates police departments with extreme delays in approving gun permits.
California has served because the division’s laboratory for all of those modifications, or, as one former civil rights staffer put it, its “punching bag.”
The civil rights division has been concerned in twice as many circumstances in California as in every other state, in accordance with a Instances evaluation of circumstances introduced by the Justice Division.
And an examination of press statements by the civil rights division exhibits that California has accounted for the next proportion of actions within the second Trump administration than throughout the identical time interval within the Biden administration.
The division is led by Harmeet Dhillon, a Californian and a conservative authorized crusader, who made her title bringing authorized challenges in opposition to most of the state’s establishments and as soon as served because the chair of the San Francisco Republican Social gathering.
Extra just lately, she was a number one authorized determine in challenges to COVID-19 mandates and has proven steadfast help for Trump; her agency represented him in his profitable 2024 battle to stay on the poll in Colorado.
The Instances spoke with a dozen former attorneys within the division, almost all of whom stated that the division has taken on a extra partisan method beneath Dhillon’s management and that the modifications within the second Trump administration are way more dramatic than something that occurred throughout Trump’s first time period.
“It’s an ideological civil rights division in a manner that we’ve by no means seen earlier than,” stated Regan Rush, the previous chief of the division’s particular litigation part, which largely targeted on investigations into police departments and prisons.
Rush is now director of the Pink Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Ahead, a nonprofit group that tracks the division’s actions.
In response to questions from The Instances, Dhillon wrote that the division’s actions aren’t political.
“This Division speaks plainly and instantly after we determine violations of federal legislation. Being clear about violations of federal civil rights legislation isn’t political or combative — it’s clear,” Dhillon stated. “I stand behind the work we’ve finished since I took over the Civil Rights Division.”
Whereas California produced President Reagan — a hero on the appropriate who as governor steadily sparred with UC Berkeley, as Dillon does at present — the state has now turn into, in conservative circles, an emblem of all the things mistaken in America.
“If there’s any state that’s the antithesis of the Trump administration, it’s California,” stated Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the legislation faculty at UC Berkeley.
Dhillon stated the division brings circumstances wherever it sees violations of federal legislation.
“California is the place a few of the most vital violations of federal civil rights legislation have occurred, as our enforcement actions exhibit,” she stated.
Former attorneys within the division stated the will to focus on California was apparent to them.
As one instance, the division has introduced greater than a dozen actions involving universities in California, largely targeted on allegations of antisemitism — the topic of an earlier Trump government order — at College of California campuses and alleged racial preferences in hiring within the UC system and within the admissions practices at a number of medical faculties within the state.
The division concluded that the medical faculties at UC Davis and UCLA racially discriminated in opposition to white and Asian candidates and that UCLA didn’t adequately reply to complaints of antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli college students. Different investigations are ongoing.
A professional-Palestinian encampment at UCLA in 2024.
(Michael Owen Baker / For The Instances)
“We have been by no means explicitly instructed that California establishments are of a specific curiosity, nevertheless it was one thing that was very simple to note,” stated Ejaz Baluch, a former Justice Division legal professional who labored on the employment litigation crew that appeared into allegations that antisemitism at UC campuses had created a hostile work surroundings.
Trump’s priorities
Dhillon instructed podcast host Michael Malice in Could that she was in “fixed contact” with the White Home on a “day by day, generally several-times-a-day foundation.”
That represents a serious shift from how the division beforehand operated, stated her predecessor, Kristen Clarke, who was the assistant legal professional basic overseeing the division through the Biden administration.
“There was a reasonably sturdy and needed wall between the Justice Division and the White Home,” Clarke stated. “It is a full 180.”
Dhillon has stated she sees her job as imposing civil rights legislation via the lens of Trump’s government orders, which took goal at variety, fairness and inclusion efforts, immigration and pro-transgender insurance policies, amongst different conservative priorities.
She stated that whereas the division “operates inside the administration’s legislation enforcement priorities … investigative and prosecutorial choices, together with which issues to pursue and the way, are made by the Division based mostly on the legislation and the details.”
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, stated that the division’s modifications beneath Dhillon signify a stark shift from the way it operated up to now.
“It’s now very a lot the anti-civil rights division,” Schiff stated. “We’re residing on this upside-down world the place departments that have been arrange for one goal are performing in a manner that’s antithetical to the aim of the division.”
Dhillon stated that beneath her management, the division “enforces federal civil rights legal guidelines evenhandedly, on behalf of all People.
“That features defending non secular liberty, Second Modification rights, and ladies’s and ladies’ areas, standing in opposition to unlawful race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending mother and father’ elementary proper to direct their kids’s upbringing and schooling.”
Her reorientation of the division led to a mass exodus of profession workers — almost three-quarters of the roughly 400 attorneys who have been there at first of 2025, by Dhillon’s telling.
That’s way more departures than within the first Trump administration.
“I stated, ‘My manner or the freeway,’ and my manner isn’t my manner, it’s President Trump’s manner,” Dhillon instructed Malice.
Dhillon instructed The Instances that the division has added 100 new attorneys and workers within the final 15 months and plans to rent 100 extra.
Prisons and police
Because the division has shifted its focus to align with the priorities specified by Trump’s government orders, it has shut down a lot of circumstances introduced throughout prior administrations.
Former attorneys within the division fear that different preexisting circumstances are languishing.
In March, the division opened an investigation into two girls’s prisons in California — California Establishment for Girls in Chino and the Central California Girls’s Facility in Chowchilla, 35 miles northwest of Fresno — over whether or not they had violated the rights of different feminine inmates by housing transgender girls within the services.
“There have been allegations of sexual assaults, rape, voyeurism and a pervasive local weather of sexual intimidation because of the presence of males within the girls’s jail,” the Justice Division stated in saying the investigation, misgendering transgender inmates.
Former attorneys within the division stated that management additionally sought to open an investigation into the impression of transgender housing insurance policies on juvenile establishments in California, however didn’t discover adequate proof to warrant opening an investigation.
The investigation into transgender inmates on the girls’s prisons got here as a prior investigation into the identical two prisons stays unresolved over reviews from a whole bunch of girls that they’d been sexually abused by guards, whilst proof supporting the allegations mounts.
Separate from the civil rights investigation, one of many former guards on the Chowchilla facility was discovered responsible in January 2025 of greater than 60 counts of sexual abuse of inmates and sentenced to 224 years in jail.
“We haven’t seen any type of aid,” stated Megan Marks, former deputy chief within the division’s particular litigation part and the deputy director and managing editor for the Pink Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Ahead.
Dhillon stated each investigations into the 2 girls’s prisons are “being pursued vigorously and concurrently.”
For the final three a long time, the division has investigated allegations of police misconduct, authority it was granted by Congress after the 1991 beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles Police Division officers.
However within the second Trump administration, the division has closed a lot of lively police investigations and moved away from what Dhillon characterised to Malice as a “standing order to persecute police departments and impose nonsense restrictions on them.”
As an alternative, the division has introduced actions in opposition to legislation enforcement businesses deemed to have failed to guard the rights of gun house owners.
California was the primary goal.
The division filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit in September 2025, alleging that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Division had systemically denied folks their 2nd Modification rights due to lengthy delays in approving hid carry permits.
Final month, it filed a second gun rights lawsuit in California, this time in opposition to the state and Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, over the state’s ban on Glock pistols, which performing U.S. Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche characterised as a “blatant trampling of our rights by the California authorities.”
Altering tone
Former attorneys within the civil rights division say the pugnacious tone in press releases, such because the one saying the lawsuit opposing the Glock ban, and in quite a few social media posts by Dhillon saying her intent to open investigations, represents a serious shift from how the division has operated up to now.
“What actually stands out greater than every other civil rights division is how a lot they demonize and personalize,” stated Christy Lopez, a former legal professional within the division who’s now a professor at Georgetown Regulation. “We tried to construct rapport with the jurisdiction.”
Dhillon defended the method she and the division have taken.
“Our job is to implement the legislation and guarantee compliance,” Dhillon stated. “That features public messaging to make sure the general public is each conscious of what the legislation requires and is aware of when others violate the legislation. We’ve designed our messaging technique with this objective in thoughts, and we’re happy with the impact it’s had.”
Quite a few former attorneys within the division additionally stated that the present management has put its thumb on the dimensions on the outset of investigations.
“We have been mainly fed a solution earlier than we performed an investigation, which is the whole antithesis of how these investigations are alleged to be performed,” stated one former Justice Division legal professional who labored on the investigation into allegations of antisemitism within the UC system and requested anonymity for concern of reprisal.
Attorneys visited UC Berkeley and UC Davis, however discovered sufficient proof solely at UCLA to convey a lawsuit on claims that antisemitism created a hostile work surroundings.
One in all Dhillon’s early prime deputies, former Huntington Seaside Metropolis Atty. Michael Gates, denied that politics performed a job in decision-making in his time within the division.
“We evaluated each case on a case-by-case foundation,” he stated. “There was nothing about politics that influenced any of that.”
Gates, who left the division in November, is now the Republican candidate difficult Bonta to be state legal professional basic.
Dhillon stated to The Instances that she is “happy with the file we’ve constructed” and believes the division has been “lively and efficient.”
However its former leaders fear that with the exodus of attorneys and the altering nature of the division’s method, it has misplaced the flexibility to satisfy its mission.
“The place does it go away the division at present?” stated Clarke, its former chief. “It’s a damaged company not in a position to adequately arise and defend the civil rights of all People.”
