The Department of Justice Voting Section’s Shift In Priorities

Civil Rights Policy Brief #243 | Rodney A. Maggay | May 7, 2025

A number of news outlets have recently reported that the United States Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Civil Rights Division Voting Section has changed their mission statement and its priorities.

After Harmeet Dhillon was ratified by the U.S. Senate (by a 52 – 45 vote) to become the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice, new mission statements were sent out to a number of sections in the Civil Rights Division. While the Civil Rights Division’s voting work has historically been focused on ensuring that marginalized voters were not discriminated against in their efforts to vote and that race was not used as a factor in drawing districts and implementing voting procedures, the Division will now shift away from those priorities. The Division will now focus on pursuing cases to ensure “elections [are] unmarred by fraud, errors or suspicion.” The new mission statement also adds that the Division will enforce President Trump’s latest executive order on elections titled “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”. However, that order has been challenged with a lawsuit and U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar – Kotelly has granted a preliminary injunction to pause implementation of the executive order until the legal issues are resolved at trial.

Policy Analysis: The news of the change in the mission statement of the Civil Rights Division’s voting rights efforts is significant and not in a good way.

The Civil Rights Division’s core functions were to enforce the nation’s civil rights and voting laws, specifically the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. One tenet that underscored both Acts was its focus to eliminate discrimination against people of color in the use of facilities, education and access to federally assisted programs. Notably, Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was about voting rights which were expanded the next year with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. This act continued the theme of prohibiting discrimination by attempting to bar discriminatory voting laws and procedures used by states, many of them in the South. It was these two laws that were primarily being enforced by the Civil Rights Division.

Now, that priority is being changed under the Trump Administration. Instead of pursuing and bringing cases that see communities of color and other groups encountering barriers to vote, the Division will now pursue cases that might suggest “fraud, errors or suspicion.” This is key because this aligns with one of President Trump’s biggest complaints – that American elections are not secure and caused him to be robbed of the 2020 presidential election. However, President Trump’s complaints about 2020 and a stolen election have been consistently proven false by experts and scholars. But with this new shift in the priorities of the Division’s Voting Section, President Trump is now given a fresh opportunity to continue to peddle his false election lies. Furthermore, the Division will now be tasked with looking for problems in voting that are exceedingly rare and nearly non – existent (fraud, non – citizens voting in significant numbers). These efforts will take away from the efforts to prevent discrimination in certain voting districts around the country and allow states and districts to implement discriminatory voting procedures without having to face pushback from the federal government. The government will have less power to investigate the obstacles minority communities face when trying to vote and instead be tasked with investigating other less pressing matters.

While the change in the mission statement is a big signal of the change in the Division’s priorities, there were other incidents that predicted this change was coming and was imminent. For the last month, the Department of Justice has slowly and quietly withdrawn and shut down active voting rights cases that were brought under the Biden Administration. With 29 cases still active, that number is expected to decrease dramatically in the next few months as government attorneys petition to withdraw the cases. Additionally, the section voting chief and five managers in the unit were reassigned from their voting rights work to positions in a complaint adjudication office handling inter – employee complaints. It was an unusual decision because of the wealth of expertise these persons had in voting rights law. And finally, the move to the Civil Rights Division to investigate fraud was unnecessary because the few fraud cases that did arise were investigated and prosecuted by the DOJ’s Criminal Division. There was no need to move those cases to the Civil Rights Division. These events signaled the change that was coming and the election lies that the Trump Administration wants to pursue despite minimal evidence of election fraud to the contrary. LEARN MORE,

Engagement Resources

Democracy Docket – DOJ lawyers explain their concerns in Division’s shift in priorities.

The Guardian – review of the removal of the DOJ Voting Unit’s leadership personnel.