Harmeet Dhillon has taken the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division into a 0-23 court record on voter-roll lawsuits while about 300 attorneys have left since her swearing in. The loss streak and the staffing drain now sit over the division as midterm elections approach.
Harmeet Dhillon and the voter-roll push
President Donald Trump put Dhillon in charge of the Civil Rights Division, and she has used the post to press state election officials on voter eligibility and noncitizen voting. This summer she sent letters demanding that officials show how they were complying with federal law and warning of potential criminal penalties for failing to do their duties in preventing noncitizens from voting.
Last year, the division led efforts to force states to turn over their full voter rolls to the federal government. Dhillon then filed lawsuits aimed at forcing skeptical Democratic-led states to comply. Those cases produced the 0-23 record.
Civil Rights Division departures
The division has typically employed around 380 lawyers. Dhillon said in an April 2025 interview with Glenn Beck that more than 100 attorneys had left. A month later, she said at a Federalist Society conference that the number had grown to 200 attorneys.
By August, she said on a Breitbart News podcast that about 300 attorneys had left since her swearing in. On that math, the division lost roughly 75% of a staff that normally totals about 380 lawyers, and reported that 130 lawyers rushed in to fill the void.
Dhillon said those departures came from lawyers who “decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do.” Yet the reported replacement pool includes people with education and work histories that might have ruled them out in the past, along with others who left a trail of hyperpartisan, conspiratorial, and in some instances bizarre statements.
Midterm elections pressure
The practical issue for election officials is less the rhetoric than the capacity. A Civil Rights Division with fewer experienced lawyers and a string of courtroom losses has less room to keep pressing the kind of voting-related cases Dhillon has prioritized, just as the midterm elections get closer and the division’s work is being recast around enforcement rather than voting-rights protection. For officials facing her letters, the question is whether the division can still mount the legal fight it has tried to wage.
