DOJ Voting Section Has Just Three Lawyers Left, Watchdog Estimates

The voting section of the U.S. Department of Justice has only three attorneys left on staff, according to an estimate provided by a group working to support the department’s remaining staff.

It’s a severe reduction in the voting section since the start of the Trump administration in January, when it had an estimated 30 attorneys assigned to enforce voting rights laws.

According to the group, Justice Connection, staff attorneys in the voting section either resigned as part of the deferred resignation program, or were reassigned to another department in the DOJ. Justice Connection said it obtained its estimate from employees within the civil rights division, of which the voting section is a part.

A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the steep reduction in the voting section’s workforce. 

But it comes amid reports of other drastic changes in the section, including reassigning senior managers to other divisions and a new mission statement shifts the section’s focus from enforcing voting rights laws to targeting voter fraud.

As Democracy Docket has been tracking, DOJ has been withdrawing from Biden-era voting rights cases piecemeal since Trump returned to the White House — including challenges to voter suppression measures in Georgia and Virginia, among others. 

Still, according to Democracy Docket’s litigation tracker, DOJ remains involved in at least 29 voting rights or redistricting cases across 18 states.

“The Trump administration is saying they don’t believe in civil rights enforcement anymore,” Stacey Young, the founder of Justice Connection and an 18-year veteran attorney in the civil rights division, told Democracy Docket about the changes. “They don’t think it’s important to ensure that everybody has the right to vote, regardless of who they are, and that their vote matters.”

Justice Connection was founded in January to provide guidance — on legal issues, leaks to the media, and finding new work if needed, among other topics — to DOJ employees reluctant to carry out the Trump administration’s agenda. As such, it maintains close ties to current department staff. 

According to Justice Connection, approximately 260 attorneys have left the civil rights division since January, as it has shifted its focus to target right-wing causes like voter fraud, anti-Christian and anti-white discrimination, gun rights and trans rights, under the leadership of the anti-voting lawyer Harmeet Dhillon. 

Former DOJ leadership and staffers have in recent weeks worried about the future of voting rights with the decimation of the voting section. 

“What does that mean for the elections coming up?” asked Joseph Rich, a longtime former attorney in the DOJ’s civil rights division, who served as chief of the voting section from 1999 to 2005. “What is going to happen when they start bringing voting fraud suits right in the middle of an election, or even close to an election?”

Young called the DOJ’s shift in directives and the mass exodus of attorneys from the civil rights division a “decimation of the entire division.” 

“I think that the consequences from the destruction of the civil rights division are pretty clear,” she said. “We’re going to have unchecked discrimination in employment and in housing, and fewer people are going to have access to vote. We’re going to have unchecked police misconduct. We’re going to have hate crimes go unprosecuted. We’re going to have prison abuses continue with no redress.”