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 range 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 pressure. Now it investigates police departments with extreme delays in approving gun permits.
California has served because the division’s laboratory for all of those adjustments, or, as one former civil rights staffer put it, its “punching bag.”
The civil rights division has been concerned in twice as many instances in California as in some other state, in accordance with a Occasions evaluation of instances introduced by the Justice Division.
And an examination of press statements by the civil rights division reveals that California has accounted for a better 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 lots of the state’s establishments and as soon as served because the chair of the San Francisco Republican Celebration.
Extra lately, she was a number one authorized determine in challenges to COVID-19 mandates and has proven steadfast assist for Trump; her agency represented him in his profitable 2024 battle to stay on the poll in Colorado.
The Occasions spoke with a dozen former attorneys within the division, practically all of whom mentioned that the division has taken on a extra partisan strategy underneath Dhillon’s management and that the adjustments within the second Trump administration are much 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,” mentioned 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 Crimson Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Ahead, a nonprofit group that tracks the division’s actions.
In response to questions from The Occasions, Dhillon wrote that the division’s actions aren’t political.
“This Division speaks plainly and immediately once we determine violations of federal regulation. Being clear about violations of federal civil rights regulation isn’t political or combative — it’s clear,” Dhillon mentioned. “I stand behind the work we’ve executed since I took over the Civil Rights Division.”
Whereas California produced President Reagan — a hero on the suitable who as governor often sparred with UC Berkeley, as Dillon does right now — the state has now turn into, in conservative circles, an emblem of all the things incorrect in America.
“If there’s any state that’s the antithesis of the Trump administration, it’s California,” mentioned Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the regulation college at UC Berkeley.
Dhillon mentioned the division brings instances wherever it sees violations of federal regulation.
“California is the place a number of the most important violations of federal civil rights regulation have occurred, as our enforcement actions reveal,” she mentioned.
Former attorneys within the division mentioned the need 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 govt 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 did not 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 Occasions)
“We have been by no means explicitly advised that California establishments are of a specific curiosity, however it was one thing that was very straightforward to note,” mentioned Ejaz Baluch, a former Justice Division legal professional who labored on the employment litigation group that seemed into allegations that antisemitism at UC campuses had created a hostile work surroundings.
Trump’s priorities
Dhillon advised podcast host Michael Malice in Might that she was in “fixed contact” with the White Home on a “each day, typically several-times-a-day foundation.”
That represents a serious shift from how the division beforehand operated, mentioned her predecessor, Kristen Clarke, who was the assistant legal professional normal overseeing the division in the course of the Biden administration.
“There was a reasonably sturdy and crucial wall between the Justice Division and the White Home,” Clarke mentioned. “It is a full 180.”
Dhillon has mentioned she sees her job as imposing civil rights regulation via the lens of Trump’s govt orders, which took purpose at range, fairness and inclusion efforts, immigration and pro-transgender insurance policies, amongst different conservative priorities.
She mentioned that whereas the division “operates inside the administration’s regulation enforcement priorities … investigative and prosecutorial selections, together with which issues to pursue and the way, are made by the Division based mostly on the regulation and the info.”
Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a former federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, mentioned that the division’s adjustments underneath Dhillon symbolize a stark shift from the way it operated previously.
“It’s now very a lot the anti-civil rights division,” Schiff mentioned. “We’re residing on this upside-down world the place departments that have been arrange for one function are appearing in a manner that’s antithetical to the aim of the division.”
Dhillon mentioned that underneath her management, the division “enforces federal civil rights legal guidelines evenhandedly, on behalf of all Individuals.
“That features defending non secular liberty, Second Modification rights, and girls’s and ladies’ areas, standing in opposition to unlawful race-based policymaking and DEI, and defending mother and father’ basic proper to direct their kids’s upbringing and training.”
Her reorientation of the division led to a mass exodus of profession workers — practically three-quarters of the roughly 400 attorneys who have been there at the start of 2025, by Dhillon’s telling.
That’s much more departures than within the first Trump administration.
“I mentioned, ‘My manner or the freeway,’ and my manner isn’t my manner, it’s President Trump’s manner,” Dhillon advised Malice.
Dhillon advised The Occasions 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 govt orders, it has shut down a variety of instances introduced throughout prior administrations.
Former attorneys within the division fear that different preexisting instances are languishing.
In March, the division opened an investigation into two girls’s prisons in California — California Establishment for Ladies in Chino and the Central California Ladies’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 mentioned in asserting the investigation, misgendering transgender inmates.
Former attorneys within the division mentioned that management additionally sought to open an investigation into the influence of transgender housing insurance policies on juvenile establishments in California, however didn’t discover ample proof to warrant opening an investigation.
The investigation into transgender inmates on the girls’s prisons got here as a previous investigation into the identical two prisons stays unresolved over stories from a whole lot of ladies that that they had 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 reduction,” mentioned Megan Marks, former deputy chief within the division’s particular litigation part and the deputy director and managing editor for the Crimson Line for Civil Rights at Democracy Ahead.
Dhillon mentioned 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 variety of energetic 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 a substitute, the division has introduced actions in opposition to regulation enforcement businesses deemed to have failed to guard the rights of gun homeowners.
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 appearing 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 asserting the lawsuit opposing the Glock ban, and in quite a few social media posts by Dhillon asserting her intent to open investigations, represents a serious shift from how the division has operated previously.
“What actually stands out greater than some other civil rights division is how a lot they demonize and personalize,” mentioned 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 strategy she and the division have taken.
“Our job is to implement the regulation and guarantee compliance,” Dhillon mentioned. “That features public messaging to make sure the general public is each conscious of what the regulation requires and is aware of when others violate the regulation. We’ve designed our messaging technique with this purpose in thoughts, and we’re happy with the impact it’s had.”
Quite a few former attorneys within the division additionally mentioned that the present management has put its thumb on the size on the outset of investigations.
“We have been mainly fed a solution earlier than we performed an investigation, which is the overall antithesis of how these investigations are presupposed to be performed,” mentioned 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 carry a lawsuit on claims that antisemitism created a hostile work surroundings.
One among Dhillon’s early high deputies, former Huntington Seashore Metropolis Atty. Michael Gates, denied that politics performed a task in decision-making in his time within the division.
“We evaluated each case on a case-by-case foundation,” he mentioned. “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 normal.
Dhillon mentioned to The Occasions that she is “pleased with the file we’ve constructed” and believes the division has been “energetic and efficient.”
However its former leaders fear that with the exodus of attorneys and the altering nature of the division’s strategy, it has misplaced the power to meet its mission.
“The place does it go away the division right now?” mentioned Clarke, its former chief. “It’s a damaged company not in a position to adequately rise up and defend the civil rights of all Individuals.”
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