Fox in the Henhouse: Senate Confirms Anti-Voting Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon to Top Voting Rights Post 

The U.S. Senate confirmed Harmeet Dhillon, a veteran lawyer with a history of attacking voting rights, to lead the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division. 

Dhillon’s nomination was confirmed in a 52-45 vote, with Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) as the lone Republican to vote against her. The Senate also confirmed attorney Dean Sauer as U.S. solicitor general — Sauer previously represented President Donald Trump in his Supreme Court immunity case and, as Missouri solicitor general, supported Texas’ effort to decertify the 2020 election.

Dhillon’s confirmation appears likely to herald a troubling about-face in the mission of a unit that historically has been at the forefront of protecting access to the ballot for marginalized groups. Since the Civil Rights era, the Justice Department’s civil rights division has been the federal government’s chief enforcer of voting rights, bringing cases under the Voting Rights Act and other protections against racial discrimination in voting, and has spearheaded the U.S. government’s efforts to crack down on racist violence and intimidation. 

But since the founding of her namesake law firm in 2006, Dhillon has become one of the leading legal figures working, instead, to roll back voting rights across the country. Just in the past few years, her firm has been involved in more than a dozen election and voting-related lawsuits across seven states and Washington, D.C., according to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker.

These lawsuits challenged everything from voting rights laws that make it easier for more people to vote, fair representation redistricting efforts, post-voting procedures and Trump’s disqualification from appearing on several states’ ballots in 2024.

Dhillon has been a fixture in the GOP and a close ally of Trump since his first administration. She served as a legal advisor to Trump’s 2020 campaign and, as votes were still being counted in key swing states, went on Fox Business to spread election conspiracy theories, calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to step in and help Trump win. 

During the 2022 midterm elections, Dhillon’s firm was extremely active in various GOP efforts to overturn elections in key states — particularly in Arizona, where she was hired by former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake and former attorney general candidate Abraham Hamadeh, both election deniers. 

Later in 2022, Dhillon lost her bid to replace former chairwoman Ronna McDaniel as the head of the RNC.

Dhillon also founded the nonprofit legal organization the Center for American Liberty (CAL) in 2018 with the stated mission of “defending the civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights legacy organizations.” Since its founding, CAL has been a source of controversy for Dhillon. The Guardian exposed that CAL was paying the Dhillon Law Group for legal work — an arrangement that raised eyebrows among ethics experts.

When Trump nominated Dhillon to the position in December, he wrote on TruthSocial that, throughout her career she “has stood up consistently to protect our cherished Civil Liberties, including taking on Big Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who were prevented from praying together during COVID, and suing corporations who use woke policies to discriminate against their workers.” He also noted she “is one of the top Election lawyers in the Country, fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted.”

Prior to Dhillon’s confirmation, a coalition of 75 civil rights groups, spearheaded by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, sent a letter to senators urging them to oppose her nomination. 

“Ms. Dhillon’s lack of independence and record of going after the rights of the very people that she would have the duty to defend is disqualifying,” the letter reads. “With the attacks on our multiracial democracy and civil and human rights already underway at the DOJ, it is critical that the Civil Rights Division fulfill its responsibility to vigorously enforce the nation’s landmark civil rights laws.”