President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi wanted Harmeet Dhillon as the Associate Attorney General for Civil Rights for good reason: her record of dogged determination secures essential civil rights for all Americans.
Before the U.S. Senate confirmed Dhillon to her post, she was an attorney of national reputation but operating from an unlikely place: San Francisco. Founding the Dhillon Law Group and Center for American Liberty from a town known more as a haven for the most progressive of ideologies proved a stroke of genius.
When the world shut down to deal with COVID-19, Dhillon kept Gov. Gavin Newsom in check. Under her leadership, lawyers filed numerous lawsuits challenging the overreach of government, while she articulated the underlying first principles informing those lawsuits on nearly every national talk show.
When Newsom ordered that all residents were required to stay home and ordered the California Highway Patrol to deny all permits for those seeking to protest that decision, Dhillon stepped in and held the State of California accountable to the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Dhillon’s law firm handed Governor Newsom another loss, this time at the Supreme Court of the United States, when in South Bay United Pentacostal Church v. Newsom, the Court declared that Newsom’s preferential treatment of hair salons and movie theaters over houses of worship violated the rights of churches everywhere. Dhillon’s efforts led to Christians, Jews, and others being able to return to their houses of worship. That should have been their choice from the beginning of the pandemic, but Gov. Newsom unilaterally expanded his executive power to trample on the First Amendment.
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But Newsom wasn’t the only recipient of Dhillon’s determination in favor of the civil rights of Americans. When Capitol police denied Rev. Patrick Mahoney’s permit to hold a September 11th prayer vigil near the U.S. Capitol, Dhillon pointed out that by allowing other groups to hold protests at the Capitol, but denying Mahoney’s opportunity to pray is discrimination, a violation of his civil rights.
Dhillon took these experiences of securing the civil rights of all Americans and brought them into the U.S. Department of Justice. The result is maybe the most intentional defense of American civil rights in decades.
Since her confirmation, she has overhauled the focus of the Civil Rights Division. Where Biden’s DOJ leveraged the power of the Federal government against parents speaking out against school board members drunk on the liquor of DEI and gender transition, Dhillon’s team is actively investigating school districts who hide efforts at transitioning students from their parents.
Where past Justice lawyers weaponized the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (“FACE”) Act against a holocaust survivor praying quietly outside an abortion center and sent armed agents to a Catholic father’s home to arrest him, Dhillon has used the FACE Act to protect houses of worship.
In fact, thanks to Dhillon, Attorney General Pam Bondi has become the first U.S. Attorney General to enforce the FACE Act against antisemites who interfered with access to a synagogue in New Jersey. And, when a mob trespassed into a church in Minnesota (along with the self-described journalist Don Lemon), Dhillon’s team led the efforts to hold their unlawful actions accountable with criminal sanctions.
All the while, as she did in private practice, Dhillon had continued to articulate the critical first principles that undergird our most precious civil rights as Americans, especially that of religious liberty.
Those who hold these truths as preciously as we should owe a debt of gratitude to Associate Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon.
Jeremy Dys is Senior Counsel and chair of the education practice group for First Liberty Institute, a nonprofit law firm dedicated to defending religious freedom for all. Learn more at FirstLiberty.org.
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