More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce US civil rights laws and accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks.
There was a mass exodus of lawyers earlier this year after political appointees removed career managers, detailed employees to menial work, unilaterally dropped cases, and made it clear the division’s focus would be enforcing Donald Trump’s priorities. By 1 May of this year, the department had lost about 70% of its attorneys – a staggering number. The letter was released on Tuesday to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the founding of the civil rights division.
Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who leads the civil rights division, has cheered the departures of career employees, describing them as activists who did not want to do the work that was asked of them. “That could not be further from the truth. We left because this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights,” the letter says. “Having no use for the expertise of career staff, the Administration launched a coordinated effort to drive us out.” The letter was released by the Justice Connection, an organization started earlier this year to provide support for justice department employees.
The justice department did not immediately return a request for comment.
The letter goes on to detail how the division has abandoned civil rights enforcement, including dismissing key cases involving voting rights, sexual abuse of unaccompanied migrant children, and multiple consent decrees involving police departments across the country. Dhillon also encouraged lawyers to leave and accept a paid leave offer and threatened to lay employees off if they did not, the letter says. Justice department officials appeared caught off guard by how many people were leaving earlier this year and quietly asked employees to reconsider leaving.
In April, Dhillon sent out new “mission statements” for each of the sections in the civil rights division that made it clear the division would not be focused on traditional civil rights enforcement. The mission statement for the voting section, for example, made scant reference to the landmark Voting Rights Act, and instead made it clear that a priority would be finding voter fraud, which is exceedingly rare.
Most of the section’s work this year has been suing states to try to obtain their full voter rolls. The department dismissed all of the existing Voting Rights Act lawsuits without consulting career attorneys and has not filed any new ones. Earlier this year, it argued in favor of narrowing section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in such a way to make it harder for non-white voters to win cases.
The administration has also used the division to launch antisemitism investigations into universities to try to force the schools to pay millions in penalties.
The decision to remove career managers from their sections earlier this year was also met with considerable alarm. Career managers often serve as a buffer between political leadership in a section and the career line attorneys. Removing them was seen as an alarming effort to open the door to political interference in the section’s work.
“America deserves better,” the letter says. “The future of the Civil Rights Division is in jeopardy, and with it, the rights it protects. We hope that one day we can return the Division to its righteous work. Until then, we will continue to defend those rights and the Constitution wherever we find ourselves. We call on all Americans to join us. Demand that the Division enforce our civil rights laws and defend the Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all.”
