Harmeet Dhillon’s decision to step down as the CEO of the Center for American Liberty to accept her new role as an assistant attorney general is one of mixed emotions, but it’s the right move, she said.
President Donald Trump chose Dhillon, who is known for championing parental rights, to lead the civil rights division of the Department of Justice (DOJ) under the direction of Attorney General Pam Bondi. Dhillon was confirmed on April 3.
“Our priorities are the president’s priorities,” Dhillon told The Epoch Times. “You’re not going to see any sunlight between us and the White House on their policy prerogatives.”
Trump’s executive orders that aim to protect women’s and girls’ rights in sports and target gender ideology, anti-Semitism, and “unconstitutional and discriminatory behavior at America’s top institutions of higher learning” indicate a few focal points for the civil rights division, she said.
“Those are our top civil rights priorities, and I don’t think anyone will be surprised to learn that,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I was selected for this role because of the background in civil rights on a number of aligned issues that we have done at the Center for American Liberty ... as well as my private practice and the Dhillon Law Group.”
The DOJ’s civil rights division is the nation’s primary defender of religious liberties, which are protected by the First Amendment and many federal statutes, “so you can expect that to be a priority of this administration,” she said.
With more than 400 attorneys, 600 employees in the DOJ’s civil rights division, and a heavy backlog of work, Dhillon said she’s getting up to speed on the division’s activities and beginning new investigations and initiatives.
“Every few minutes, something different crosses my desk,” she said, on her seventh day on the job.
While people on social media are asking her to investigate a wide range of issues, Dhillon said it will take time.
“I can’t put the cart before the horse. We have to do our investigations in due order,” she said. “As lawyers, we need to get our facts straight and go through a particular process before we file lawsuits, but I can assure you that the civil rights division under Bondi’s leadership, and under President Trump’s leadership is going to be extremely active on the issues that Americans care about.”
And those issues, she said, are the ones the president has spoken about on the campaign trail and in the Oval Office.
“Once we get started with some of these lawsuits becoming public and investigations—having some teeth into them—I think people are going to see those results to a much greater degree than ever in a Republican administration,” she said.
‘Bittersweet’ Sentiments
When she accepted the nomination, she said, she knew that it would mean stepping down as CEO of the Center for American Liberty, which she founded in 2018.“It’s bittersweet,” Dhillon said. “I’m sad about moving on because it was a dream of mine.”
But she is confident in her colleague Mark Trammell’s ability to take the reins. Trammell is the former executive director.
Dhillon said she started the organization because she saw conservative organizations “doing little slices of civil rights work in very narrow areas, but nobody comprehensively taking on the rights of American citizens who are suffering from novel forms of discrimination or traditional forms of discrimination.”
The center has defended the rights of free speech for students on campus. It filed more lawsuits during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown—mainly on the grounds of religious freedom—than any other organization. It also is well-known for representing young people who had undergone medical and hormonal treatments as teens in attempts to change their gender, which they are now trying to reverse; they’re known as detransitioners.
A New Role
When asked if she would investigate complaints from parents of gender dysphoric children who say they’ve faced the threat of having a child taken from their custody for refusing to call the child by opposite sex or preferred pronouns, Dhillon said, “Center for American Liberty took on several cases like that and that should be a clue.”“I find it to be a very troubling trend,” she said. “It is absolutely a violation of Supreme Court jurisprudence, as well as natural law and civil rights law, for any state to usurp parental rights the way that we have seen.”
Coercing parents to use preferred pronouns as a condition of enjoying their natural rights as parents is a violation of the First Amendment, due process, and equal protection, Dhillon said.
She said she is also concerned about states that prohibit foster parents from helping orphaned children or troubled youth because they refuse to align with certain viewpoints on gender.
Dhillon said the presidential election showed that the tides of public opinion have turned on gender ideology, but because government institutions are lagging in their response, they “perpetuate these biased viewpoints” in concert with nonprofit agencies whose “existence depends on these divisive ideologies.”
“They’re not going to go away lightly, and American lives hang in the balance,” she said. “Parental rights are civil rights and human rights, and we will certainly be looking very closely at state actors and private actors who threaten those rights.”
Ready for ‘Predictable’ Resistance
Dhillon said she isn’t fretting about states or organizations that are pushing back on Trump’s executive orders.“It’s entirely predictable,” she said. “It doesn’t bother me at all.”
Some states have been on the wrong side of history in the past, Dhillon said, citing the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case when Southern states resisted racial integration in public schools.
“There is a history of states being wrong, and our federal civil rights prevailing. That’s our national story,” she said. “We’re the best nation in the world when it comes to protecting the rights of minorities and fundamental rights.”
Like those who resisted the civil rights movement and the freeing of slaves, their names will go down in ignominy, Dhillon said.
“History will prove what we’re doing to be correct. I’m very confident in that,” she said.
The mood of mainstream America has changed, and more people are speaking out because they feel they have a president who reflects their views, Dhillon said.
Trammell to Take Helm
As the Center for American Liberty’s new CEO, Trammell characterized Dhillon as “a visionary leader” who founded the organization with a mission to represent Americans whose civil rights were “left behind.”“We’re absolutely going to continue advancing that mission,” he told The Epoch Times. “We’re not looking to reinvent the wheel. We’re doing a lot of things right.”
“One of our clients, Layla Jane, had a double mastectomy when she was 13 years old, completely unable to give informed consent, and so my priority is winning these cases,” he said.
Trammell also wants to bring to light more cases “representing parents whose kids are being socially transitioned secretly in public schools.”
Regino’s daughter expressed to school staff that she wanted to talk to her mom about her gender identity and her transition, but she was discouraged by the school from doing so, Trammell said.
The Center for American Liberty claims that the school violated Regino’s 14th Amendment rights under the due process clause to direct the upbringing and education of her child. The appeals court ruling now allows her case to continue.
“It’s very much a conspiracy to deprive parents of their rights,” Trammell said. “We see this happening, not just in [the Regino] case, but across the state of California and in a growing number of states across the country.”
The Center for American Liberty is currently filing Public Records Act requests in California to compel schools to provide documents that Trammell said will expose teachers and administrators who “are keeping secrets from parents” about socially transitioning children.
