Photo: Gage Skidmore / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0. Harmeet Dhillon at the Turning Point Action Conference in West Palm Beach, Florida, July 15, 2023. Archive photo; cropped and resized, adapted under the same license.
Harmeet Dhillon has resigned as the U.S. Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, telling Fox News in an updated November 5 report that the decision was her own and that she wanted to return to private practice.
Fox reported that Dhillon formally submitted her resignation on November 5, citing a letter it obtained. It also quoted Attorney General Todd Blanche’s statement on X saying he accepted her resignation that day.
Dhillon describes an earlier decision, not an earlier departure
“I wasn’t asked to resign,” Dhillon told Fox. “I resigned three weeks ago, and Susie asked me to please wait until after the midterms.”
Fox reported that Dhillon said she had informed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles before the election that she believed she had accomplished what she came to Washington to do and wanted to return to private practice. Her account describes an earlier decision and conversation; it does not establish that she left her position three weeks ago.
The account of Wiles asking her to wait is Dhillon’s account as reported by Fox, not an independently confirmed account of that conversation. The formal resignation letter was submitted November 5, according to Fox. The report did not give an effective departure date or identify a successor.
“My decision, my choice,” Dhillon told Fox. “It’s time.” Her stated reasons were completing the work she came to do and returning to private practice. The report does not establish that election losses caused her decision.
Attorney general’s acceptance reported
“Today, I accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon,” Blanche wrote on X, according to Fox. The statement thanked her for her public service and wished her success in her future work.
That reported acceptance updates the earlier reporting on her planned departure. Bloomberg Law had reported earlier Thursday, citing four people familiar with the matter, that Dhillon planned to step down.
What Dhillon led at the Justice Department
Dhillon has led the Civil Rights Division since April 2025. The division is the Justice Department unit responsible for enforcing federal civil rights law. According to her official department biography, she was confirmed by the Senate on April 3, 2025, and sworn in on April 7.
Fox described her tenure as a shift in the division’s priorities toward issues including religious discrimination, Second Amendment rights, election integrity, DEI and race-conscious policies, and transgender participation in women’s sports. The reported departure changes the leadership overseeing those priorities, but the report does not establish whether they will change.
Return to private practice
Before joining the department, Dhillon founded Dhillon Law Group, a private legal practice, according to her official biography. Bloomberg Law had reported that she told its reporters and editors in August that she planned to return to her California-based firm after her time at the department.
Her new comments to Fox make returning to private practice an explicit part of her stated reason for leaving. They do not supply a firm departure date or a timetable for resuming that work.
JBizNews Desk | Washington
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