By May 2025, over 70% of attorneys in the DOJ Civil Rights Division — more than 250 lawyers — had left. The criminal section dropped from 40 to 13 trial attorneys. The voting rights section operates with bare-bones staff. Two hundred former employees signed an open letter calling the division 'destroyed.'
The division's mission was flipped. Instead of investigating hate crimes, voter suppression, and police misconduct, it was redirected to investigate transgender athletes, 'anti-Christian bias,' gun rights, and English-only enforcement. Internal memos ordered a halt to new civil rights cases.
The results: zero sexual assault cases resolved in all of 2025. Zero racial harassment cases resolved. The DOJ withdrew from consent decrees in Minneapolis (George Floyd) and Louisville (Breonna Taylor). Investigations into police departments in Phoenix, Trenton, Memphis, Mount Vernon, Oklahoma City, and Louisiana State Police were closed. All new civil rights investigations into law enforcement were halted.
The Civil Rights Division was established in 1957. It enforced the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Fair Housing Act. In 14 months, it was gutted from within.
Update (October 7, 2026): More than 300 of the Civil Rights Division's 400-plus lawyers have left in the past 19 months, and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon's recruitment of “civil rights warriors” has brought in more than 80 new attorneys, many to work on voter-roll, immigration and campus antisemitism cases, a Bloomberg Law analysis found. New hires came from more than 20 conservative legal groups, including the Stephen Miller-founded America First Legal, according to an internal list. Julia Haller, who joined from America First Legal, faces a pending disciplinary case in Washington over lawsuits against state election officials, and the voting section is led by acting chief Eric Neff, whom the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office placed on leave in 2022 after the dismissal of his indictment of an election software CEO. The department said its hiring standards haven't changed: “Every career lawyer we hire is screened, ranked, interviewed, and recommended by a committee of experienced career staff.”