Statement

Harmeet Dhillon was confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights on April 3, 2025, by a vote of 52 to 45, over the strong objections of civil rights organizations who warned that she had spent the bulk of her career actively working against the civil rights laws she would be confirmed to enforce. Her record before DOJ was clear. As a lawyer for the Trump campaign in post-2020 election litigation, she promoted unsubstantiated claims about election fraud. She opposed the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, designed to ensure that voters would be protected from racial discrimination. She also filed more than ten unsuccessful lawsuits challenging California's voting programs. As we have said: "Harmeet Dhillon is not a civil rights lawyer and has no business leading the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division.”

Today's executive order on federal elections is a recipe for chaos, disenfranchisement, and constitutional crisis, wrapped in disingenuous narratives about access to the ballot.

The decision by the United States Department of Justice to seek dismissal of charges in the case of the violent killing of Breonna Taylor is a gross miscarriage of justice. This Department of Justice has made crystal clear that it will not protect the basic civil and constitutional right for a Black woman to be safe from police violence in her own home.

Today, with the confirmation of MarkWayne Mullin as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, we are reminded that the fight for civil and human rights is not a chapter in our history. It is the battle of this moment. And this moment demands both clarity and action.

WASHINGTON — Maya Wiley, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, released the following statement on President Trump’s actions related to law enforcement and crime in Washington, D.C.:

WASHINGTON — The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights released the following statement on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965:

WASHINGTON — Leslie Proll, senior director of the voting rights program at The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, issued the following statement on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruling halting the Trump Administration’s executive order on elections: