The justice department’s civil rights division is shifting its focus away from its longstanding work protecting the rights of marginalized groups and will instead pivot towardsDonald Trump’s priorities including hunting for noncitizen voters and protecting white people from discrimination, according to new internal mission statements seen by the Guardian.
The new priorities were sent to several sections of the civil rights division this week by Harmeet Dhillon, a Trump ally who was confirmed a little more than two weeks ago to lead the division. Several of them give only glancing mention to the statutes and kinds of discrimination that have long been the focus of the division, which dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Several of the mission statements point to Trump’s executive orders as priorities for the section.
The mission statement for the voting section, for example, barely mentions the Voting Rights Act and instead says the section will focus on preventing voter fraud – which is exceedingly rare – and helping states find noncitizens on their voter rolls (noncitizen voting is alsoexceedingly rare). The guidance for the Housing and Civil Enforcement section does not make a single mention of the Fair Housing Act, the landmark 1968 civil rights law that has long been a central part of the department’s work.
“It’s absolutely astonishing,” said Sasha Samberg-Champion, a former appellate lawyer in the justice department’s civil rights division. “This reflects the complete abdication of the core responsibilities of each of these sections.”
The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The decision to send new mission statements to the sections is itself unusual. While the priorities of the sections often change from administration to administration, the core work often remains the same and the department’s career attorneys are expected to be apolitical. Trump has moved to end the independence of the justice department and use it as a tool to further his political goals and punish rivals.
“To me, these new mission statements signal a significant change in the priorities that each of these sections will be expected to pursue,” said Jocelyn Samuels, who led the civil rights division from 2013 to 2014. “Some of this is explicit – where, for example, the new statements specifically call out enforcement of some of the president’s executive orders as the guide for the section’s work. Some of it is a matter of omission.
“I suspect that the descriptions don’t themselves dictate what the sections will do, but they certainly manifest the expectations that leadership of the division will impose,” added Samuels,who is currently suingtheTrump administrationfor firing her from her position on the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The justice department has already begun to pull back on its civil rights cases. It has withdrawn from several of thevoting casesfiled under Joe Biden’s administration, terminated anenvironmental justice settlementon behalf of Black residents in Alabama, anddropped a pay discrimination lawsuiton behalf of a Black lawyer against the Mississippi senate.
The primary focus of the department’s voting section has long been ensuring that voting laws and practices aren’t tainted with discrimination. The new guidance this week shifts that focus and echoes Trump’s rhetoric around fraud.
“The mission of the Voting Rights Section of the DOJ Civil Rights Division is to ensure free, fair, and honest elections unmarred by fraud, errors, or suspicion,” the new mission statement says. “The Section will work to ensure that only American citizens vote in US federal elections and do so securely. Other section priorities include preventing illegal voting, fraud, and other forms of malfeasance and error. All attorneys within the Voting Section will advocate with zeal on behalf of the United States of America in furtherance of all objectives as tasked.”
It also says the voting section will work with the Department of Homeland Security to help states access citizenship data so that they can remove noncitizens from their voter rolls. The section will also “vigorously enforce the statutes, orders, and priorities” in a recent Trump executive order that requires states to require proof of citizenship to vote and to decertify voting machines. Several civil rights groups are already challenging that order in court and say it is illegal.
“What’s missing from here is the idea that we’re going to protect the right to vote on a nondiscriminatory basis,” Samberg-Champion said. “Silly me, I always thought that was the core purpose of the voting section and the core purpose of the Voting Rights Act.”
Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Law School and a top official in the civil rights division during the Obama administration, noted that federal law puts certain restrictions in place “before anybody in the federal government, civil rights division included, can lawfully touch state database information”.
Noting that much of the language in the mission statement was broad, Levitt said he would be watching to see how it was implemented.
“Read through the lens of all of the rest that the administration is doing, this is a further example of how off-course the administration is. This isn’t the statement that any administration in the last 68 years would have written,” he said in an email. “But the way this gets cashed out is far more important.”
The new mission statement for theHousingand Civil Enforcement section says the section will focus on protecting the rights of members of the military and enforcing the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which prevents zoning discrimination. “The aggressive and even-handed deployment of RLUIPA to restore religious liberty will be a top priority,” the document says.
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The guidance also says the section will “focus on challenges to racially discriminatory lending programs”. Samberg-Champion said that was a “code red”.
“They’re going to look for opportunities to challenge special purpose credit programs and other lending programs that are meant to enhance credit opportunities for people who have been starved of credit historically,” said Samberg-Champion, who served as deputy general counsel for enforcement and fair housing during the Biden administration. “It’s just astonishing that what they’re trying to do is actually diminish the availability of credit for people and go after banks, go after lenders who presumably are trying to make their credit availability fairer.”
Guidance for the educational opportunities section focuses on preventing discrimination against white applicants and cites the supreme court’s 2023 ruling saying that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional. It also says the department will focus on anti-transgender issues.
“This mandate includes protecting the rights of women and girls to unfettered access to programs, facilities, extracurricular activities, and sports or athletic opportunities that exclude males from presence or participation,” the statement reads. “The mandate also includes preventing racial discrimination in school admissions policies and preventing antisemitism in education wherever it is found.”
The new mission statement for the disability rights section appears to have nothing to do with disability. “The zealous and faithful pursuit of this section’s mission requires dedication of the section’s resources, actions, attention, and energy to the priorities and objectives of the President,” the guidance says. It then goes on to list a series of executive orders that target transgender Americans.
Eve Hill, who served as a top lawyer in the civil rights division under the Obama administration, said she wasn’t “overly alarmed” by the message to the disability rights section.
“It’s hard to tell what effect it will have other than preventing [the disability rights section] from working for people with the disability of gender dysphoria. Which is important, but they hadn’t done much work in that space anyway,” she said.
Several of the mission statements include a similar line that says attorneys are expected to enforce the law “faithfully and zealously”.
That language is significant, Samberg-Champion said.
“They’re anticipating – and I think correctly – that they’re going to get considerable pushback from the career staff as to what they’re being asked to do,” he said. “This reflects their understanding that they are radically changing what each of these sections historically has understood its mission to be. And that this is not going to go over well with the people who have made it their life’s work to enforce these important laws.”