JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is in upheaval. The new Trump-appointed leadership is trying to dramatically reshape it and its mission. That has prompted a mass exodus of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division, which has been regarded as a crown jewel of the DOJ. NPR justice correspondent Ryan Lucas is here in the studio. Hey, Ryan.
RYAN LUCAS, BYLINE: Hey there.
SUMMERS: So Ryan, let's start with the Justice Department's leadership. What do they say they're doing with the Civil Rights Division?
LUCAS: So first off, the Civil Rights Division has been around for almost 70 years. It was born out of the Civil Rights Movement and the push to end segregation. And traditionally, the division has protected the constitutional rights of all Americans. It combats discrimination in schools, in public housing, in the workplace, in policing, hate crimes. And it's normal for the priorities of the division to shift a bit from administration to administration, particularly from Republican to Democratic administration, but what's happening now is something entirely different. Here's how Harmeet Dhillon, the new head of the division - appointed by Trump - described her vision for civil rights enforcement at a recent event with the conservative Federalist Society.
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HARMEET DHILLON: We don't just slow down the woke. We take up the cause to achieve the executive branch's goals. This is the opportunity where we can ensure that our nation's civil rights laws benefit all Americans, not just a select few.
SUMMERS: So Ryan, what does that look like in practice so far?
LUCAS: Well, I've talked with five current and former Justice Department officials. Some of them spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't allowed to talk to journalists, and they all describe this very differently from how Dhillon does. They say that Dhillon quite simply is dismantling the Civil Rights Division and its traditional mission. One described it as taking an axe to the division. And they say that under the Trump administration, the division is largely abandoning its traditional mission of enforcing the nation's civil rights laws for all Americans, and instead, it's being turned into an enforcement arm of the administration. And its new mission, largely, is to enforce President Trump's executive orders. So things like ending the purported radical indoctrination in schools, defending women from gender ideology extremism, combating antisemitism and alleged anti-Christian bias. And what that has done, I'm told, has prompted this mass exodus that we're seeing of experienced attorneys from the division.
SUMMERS: You say mass exodus. How big of a group are we talking about here?
LUCAS: Well, I'm told that more than 70% of the attorneys who were at the Civil Rights Division on Inauguration Day have left or will have left by the end of this month. That's approximately 250 attorneys. That is a huge number. Some of the hardest-hit sections, I'm told, are education, voting rights, special litigation. That last one is the section that investigates alleged abuse by police departments around the country. And people are leaving in a variety of ways. Some have just quit. Some have taken the administration's deferred resignation program. Others have retired early. But the effect is significant. I spoke with former DOJ attorney Stacey Young. She spent the last chunk of her 18-year career in the Civil Rights Division before leaving after Trump's inauguration.
STACEY YOUNG: It's absolutely the dismantling of the division when, in just a couple of months, you have radically diverted enforcement in a way that drives out almost three-quarters of the division. There's no other way to describe that but a dismantling.
LUCAS: Now, attorneys in the division, by and large, feel that they cannot do the sort of work that they've always been able to do, and that includes during the first Trump administration.
SUMMERS: OK. Well, I mean, there's just been so much change - a lot of upheaval across the federal government right now. So tell us, why does this particular bit of turmoil stand out?
LUCAS: That's a good question. And the answer that I've heard in my reporting is in essence that for decades, the Civil Rights Division has put employers and schools and owners of public housing and police departments on notice that if they don't comply with civil rights laws, if they discriminate, they could face legal action. And so without the division doing that work, department veterans say there will likely be more unlawful discrimination in all facets of life across the country that's just going to go unchecked.
SUMMERS: NPR's Ryan Lucas, thank you.
LUCAS: Thank you.
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