WASHINGTON ― The Senate voted Thursday to confirm Harmeet Dhillon to run the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, putting one of President Donald Trump’s own legal advisers and someone with a long record of attacking voting rights in charge of protecting those rights for millions of Americans.
The Senate confirmed Dhillon by a vote of 52 to 45. Every Democrat voted no. Every Republican voted yes, except for one: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Her office did not immediately respond to a request for comment as to why.
Three senators missed the vote, though it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of Dhillon’s confirmation. They were Sens. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
A former California Republican Party official, Dhillon has been Trump’s legal adviser for the last four years. During his 2020 campaign, she perpetuated his lie that the election was stolen from him and spread false claims about persistent voter fraud in Pennsylvania, a state that Trump legitimately lost to Joe Biden.
Her law firm, Dhillon Law Group, has filed more than a dozen lawsuits across eight states aimed at challenging voting rights, election processes or the ability of Trump to appear on 2024 ballots in states that disqualified him because of his role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
In addition to her assault on voting rights, Dhillon has assailed LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive rights, referring to doctors who perform gender-affirming care as “butchers” and referring to abortions as “killing children in the womb.”
Just ahead of Dhillon’s vote, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who is the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said DOJ’s Civil Rights Division is “often called the ‘crown jewel’” of the department, as it enforces landmark laws that prohibit discrimination.
“It is the duty of the head of this division to protect the civil rights of every American,” Durbin said on the Senate floor. “I cannot and will not support a nominee whose record suggests she is more likely to attack civil rights than defend them.”
Dhillon brushed off questions about how she’d decide when to sue over state laws that discriminate against voters during her Senate confirmation hearing in February. This is a core responsibility of her new job.
When Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) noted that 13 states immediately passed laws that made it harder to vote after the Supreme Court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 ― specifically, states including Texas, Georgia and Arizona closed 1,688 polling stations within six years of the court decision ― Dhillon said there was no evidence those actions discriminated against people.
“I disagree with the premise of your question that all of these measures that Georgia and other states took to improve confidence of all citizens in voting in fact had any form of discriminatory impact,” Dhillon told Hirono. “That is the crux, isn’t it, as to whether or not these laws have an anti-discriminatory effect?” the Hawaii senator interjected. “And you obviously do not think so.”
Civil rights groups condemned Dhillon’s confirmation after the vote.
“Harmeet Dhillon is not a civil rights lawyer and has no business leading the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division,” said Lena Zwarensteyn of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, a coalition of more than 240 national civil and human rights groups.
“Senators who voted to confirm Ms. Dhillon have failed their constituents and our country,” Zwarensteyn said in a statement. “This confirmation is insulting, and it should alarm everyone that an election denier is now in charge of enforcing the Voting Rights Act, that an anti-LGBTQ+ activist is now tasked with protecting the civil rights of LGBTQ+ people in America, and that yet another one of Trump’s personal lawyers is now in a leadership role at the nation’s signature agency for the enforcement of our federal civil rights laws.”
The Leadership Conference helped pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, which created the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department and authorized the position that Dhillon will now hold.
“We are resolved to fight on – every day – for fundamental rights and for the future of our multiracial democracy at a time when the DOJ is brazenly and shamefully attacking them,” Zwarensteyn said. “The civil rights community will be watching.”