Trump’s hand-picked head of the division has outlined priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way past administrations have enforced civil rights law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Trump administration has quietly transformed the Justice Department\u2019s Civil Rights Division<\/a>, forcing out a majority of career managers and implementing new priorities that current and former officials say abandon a decadeslong mission of enforcing laws that prohibit discrimination in hiring, housing and voting rights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More than a dozen senior lawyers \u2014 many with decades of experience working under presidents of both parties \u2014 have been reassigned, the current and former officials say. Some have resigned in frustration after they were moved to less desirable roles unrelated to their expertise, according to the sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a complete bloodbath,\u201d said a senior Justice Department lawyer in the division who is not authorized to speak publicly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Last week, President Donald Trump\u2019s hand-picked head of the division issued a series of memos outlining priorities that are dramatically at odds with the way both Republican and Democratic administrations have enforced civil rights law \u2014 including the first Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rather than focusing on enforcing federal laws against discrimination, the division is now charged with pursuing priorities laid out in a series of Trump\u2019s executive orders, including \u201cKeeping Men out of Women’s Sports\u201d and \u201cEnding Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,\u201d according to the memos, which were issued by division head Harmeet Dhillon and obtained by NBC News. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dhillon is a conservative culture warrior<\/a> who represented Trump in challenging the results of the 2020 election and ardently backed his baseless claims of fraud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The changes have not been publicly announced by the Justice Department. Reuters first reported\u2002<\/a>some of them Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is a 180 shift from the division\u2019s traditional mission,\u201d said a former senior official in the division who declined to be named in fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “These documents appear to have been created in a vacuum completely divorced from reality,” the former official said. “The division can only enforce statutes that have been passed by Congress, and these orders seem to contemplate division attorneys\u2019 executing on work that fundamentally departs from the division\u2019s long-standing mission.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a statement, Dhillon portrayed the changes as a normal shift of emphasis in a new administration, as well as a quest for efficiency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEach new administration has its own priorities, and allocates resources accordingly,” Dhillon said. “The Trump administration is no different. When I assumed my duties as Assistant Attorney General, I learned that certain sections in Civil Rights had substantial existing caseloads and backlogs, and that formed the basis of temporary details to assist those sections in getting, and staying, caught up.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n She added: \u201cThe Civil Rights Division looks forward to continuing to aggressively protecting the civil rights of Americans.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n NBC News spoke to 10 current and former employees of the Civil Rights Division for this article, as well as other sources familiar with the Justice Department\u2019s operations. Most declined to be identified, citing fear of retaliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The sources say many of the division\u2019s section chiefs have been transferred to roles unrelated to their legal backgrounds, including in the complaint adjudication office and the office that handles public records requests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery presidential administration has its own policy priorities,” said Stacey Young, who spent 18 years in the division before resigning in January, “but I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any precedent for an administration almost completely refocusing the civil rights division\u2019s enforcement priorities the way this one has.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The loss is truly hard to quantify,” added Young, who co-founded Justice Connection, a group now trying to highlight Trump administration changes to the Justice Department. “Vital civil rights work is not going to get done.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n The overhaul of the Civil Rights Division is a microcosm of what has been happening across the federal government, as the Trump administration has removed nonpartisan civil servants<\/a> and dismantled or reoriented federal agencies<\/a> with a speed and an audacity that few thought was possible. Similar changes have been happening to a lesser degree at other Justice Department offices, current and former officials say. But they say the extent of the repurposing of the Civil Rights Division stands out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Founded in 1957 after the passage of the 20th century\u2019s first major civil rights legislation, the Civil Rights Division has always been subject to the policy preferences of the president, and enforcement priorities tend to differ in Republican and Democratic administrations. But there is no precedent for the changes that have been made over the last three months, which are far more consequential than anything that occurred in Trump\u2019s first term, current and former officials say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was there almost 18 years, and what\u2019s happening now is basically the opposite of what we\u2019ve been doing,\u201d said a veteran lawyer who recently left the department. \u201cIn the first Trump administration, they engaged with us as attorneys. The political appointees were normal lawyers. Sometimes we persuaded them and sometimes they disagreed, but there was always a conversation about why and what the law required. That is not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the Biden administration, the Civil Rights Division convicted 180 police officers of violating people\u2019s civil rights, according to Justice Department records. It also prosecuted a variety of high-profile hate crimes cases, including one against the Texas man who targeted Mexicans when he killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso and the Pennsylvania man who killed 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Among the many settlements over racial discrimination, the division secured reforms at Hawkins County Schools in Tennessee, where an investigation found<\/a> that incidents of harassment \u2014 including a mock \u201cslave auction\u201d to sell Black students to their white counterparts and a \u201cmonkey of the month\u201d campaign to ridicule Black students \u2014 created a racially hostile environment. On voting rights, the division successfully challenged<\/a> an Arizona law requiring people registering to vote to list their birthplaces and provide proof of citizenship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Current and former employees say many of those enforcement actions are unimaginable under the new regime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey are withdrawing everything we\u2019ve done and taking the opposite side on voting rights, for example,\u201d said a recently departed Civil Division lawyer. \u201cThis is not \u2018Oh, we want to do more religion cases\u2019 or \u2018We don\u2019t want to do creative redlining cases.\u2019 This is abandoning everything that we have done in the past. They are actively anti-civil rights. This didn\u2019t happen in Trump 1.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dhillon took office April 7, but the changes had already been underway. So far the Civil Rights Division has suspended investigations<\/a> of police abuse and launched probes into whether Los Angeles is violating people\u2019s gun rights<\/a> and whether American universities are tolerating antisemitism<\/a>. The division was also involved in the lawsuit filed last week<\/a> accusing the state of Maine of violating the law by allowing transgender athletes to participate on women\u2019s sports teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, current and former officials say, the managerial jobs vacated in recent weeks have not been filled, so the traditional work of the division has all but stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIf regular Americans think that this administration is going to protect their rights, they\u2019re just wrong,” a recently departed division lawyer said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n