Harmeet Dhillon Resigns From DOJ, Leaving Future of Second Amendment Section Uncertain
Harmeet Dhillon has resigned as head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, Fox News reported Thursday, citing sources. Bloomberg Law had reported she planned to leave after the midterms. No successor has been named.
Dhillon told Fox News Digital she made the decision weeks before Republicans lost the House and Senate. She told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles three weeks before Election Day that she had “accomplished everything” she came to do and wanted to return to private practice. Wiles asked her to wait until after the midterms. Dhillon formally submitted her resignation on November 5.
“I wasn’t asked to resign,” Dhillon said. “I resigned three weeks ago, and Susie asked me to please wait until after the midterms.”
Trump nominated her in December 2024. She was sworn in as assistant attorney general for civil rights in April 2025 after Senate confirmation. Her roughly 19-month tenure remade a division that had treated the Second Amendment like it didn’t exist.
The First Affirmative Gun Rights Lawsuit
The signature move for gun owners came on September 30, 2025. Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division sued the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Robert Luna over concealed-carry permit delays, the first affirmative lawsuit DOJ had ever filed on behalf of gun owners.
The numbers in the complaint were ugly. Between January 2024 and March 2025, LASD took in 3,982 new carry-license applications. As of May 2025, it had approved two. The average wait to begin processing was 281 days, more than nine months. The median was 372 days. Some applicants waited as long as 1,030 days, nearly three years, for an interview. California law requires an initial determination within 90 days. LASD blew past that deadline.
“The Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Dhillon said when the suit was filed. “This lawsuit seeks to stop Los Angeles County’s egregious pattern and practice of delaying law-abiding citizens from exercising their right to bear arms.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi put it more bluntly: Los Angeles County may not like the right to bear arms, but the Constitution does not let them infringe on it. Second Amendment Foundation Executive Director Adam Kraut called it a landmark. The first time the federal government had sued to defend gun owners instead of fighting them.
In August 2026, DOJ and LASD reached a settlement. LASD agreed to align its permitting process with *Bruen*, cut the backlog, and submit to four years of public reporting and federal-court enforcement. Dhillon called it a win for Los Angeles County residents and for the Second Amendment. The deal still needed a federal judge’s approval to take effect.
A Second Amendment Section That Never Existed Before
The LA County case was not a one-off. In late 2025, Dhillon stood up the Civil Rights Division’s first Second Amendment Rights Section. AmmoLand News reported the unit in November; Dhillon announced it on camera in December.
The section’s job was straightforward: treat the right to keep and bear arms like every other civil right the division already enforces, investigate state and local gun policies that conflict with Supreme Court precedent, file lawsuits, and drop amicus briefs.
Dhillon called that right fundamental and promised DOJ had “a lot of 2A work planned.”
That work showed up in court. Dhillon argued before the Seventh Circuit against Illinois’ Protect Illinois Communities Act, the state’s AR-15 and standard-capacity magazine ban, the first time DOJ had argued against a gun law in a federal appeals court. The division also filed amicus briefs in Barnett v. Raoul, arguing rifles in common use cannot be banned, and in Wolford v. Lopez, challenging Hawaii’s rule that effectively bans carry on private property without the owner’s express permission.
In May 2026, the Second Amendment Section sued the District of Columbia over its bans on AR-15-style rifles and suppressors, arguing Metropolitan Police enforcement is a pattern-or-practice civil rights violation under 34 U.S.C. § 12601. Barry. Arrington signed as acting chief of the section. Dhillon’s name was at the top.
Mixed Record, Real Results
None of this means Dhillon’s DOJ was a pure 2A shop. Gun rights groups spent much of the past two years furious at the department for defending the National Firearms Act (NFA), prying at FPC and SAF membership lists after those groups beat the post office gun ban, and sticking with pieces of the Biden-era “engaged in the business” rule.
Dhillon’s Civil Rights Division was the part of DOJ that actually sued for gun owners. The rest of the building often looked like the old building.
What changed under Dhillon was the baseline. For decades, Civil Rights ignored the Second Amendment. Under her watch, the division created a dedicated section, filed the first affirmative federal lawsuit for gun owners, argued against state assault-weapon bans, and sued a major city over rifle and suppressor bans. That is not nothing. It is also not permanent.
What Comes Next
Dhillon said she plans to return to private practice. Bloomberg Law reported that in an August roundtable, she said she would return to her California firm, Dhillon Law Group, which her brother, Mandeep Singh Dhillon, managed in her absence. Fox reported she moved to Washington after the deaths of her husband and father to “serve my country,” and that after about two years she decided it was time.
“We changed it, and that’s what we came here to do. And it’s done,” she said.
Fox reported roughly 300 attorneys left the division during Trump’s second term. Dhillon said she recruited more than 130 lawyers.
What happens to the Second Amendment Section without her is the open question. Sections don’t delete themselves overnight, but priorities do. The LA County settlement’s four-year reporting window only works if DOJ keeps enforcing it, and the D.C. rifle case only matters if someone finishes it.
Gun owners got something from Dhillon’s time at Justice that they never got from Civil Rights before: lawyers whose job was to sue the people who delay, deny, and ban. Whether that survives her resignation is the next story.
AmmoLand News will continue to follow the succession fight and the pending Second Amendment cases.
About John Crump
Mr. Crump is an NRA instructor and constitutional activist with more than 26 years of experience in networking and cybersecurity for major Fortune 100 companies. John has written about firearms, the Constitution, and cybersecurity, and has interviewed people from all walks of life. John lives in Northern Virginia with his wife and sons. Follow him on X at @right2bear, or at www.crumpy.com.