A memo instructed division supervisor Kathleen Wolfe to ensure that civil rights attorneys do not file “any new complaints, motions to intervene, agreed-upon remands, amicus briefs, or statements of interest,” the Washington Post reported.
The letter does not say how long the freeze will last, but the order essentially shuts down the division for at least the first couple of weeks of the Trump administration.
Trump nominated Harmeet Dhillon to lead the division; she is awaiting Senate confirmation.
The memo states that officials are implementing the freeze to be “consistent with the Department’s goal of ensuring that the Federal Government speaks with one voice in its view of the law and to ensure that the President’s appointees or designees have the opportunity to decide whether to initiate any new cases.”
A different memo sent to Wolfe on Wednesday reportedly told her that the Civil Rights Division must direct the Justice Department’s chief of staff to any consent decrees the division has finalized within the last 90 days.
The Biden administration hurried police reform agreements with several jurisdictions after Trump won the election, with the knowledge that his appointees could strike them down.
One of the major recent moves by the division includes a federal oversight agreement with the city of Louisville, Kentucky, after the killing of Breonna Taylor, which sparked major protests. The next month, the division reached an agreement with leaders in Minneapolis over a police accountability plan years after the death of George Floyd.
Trump has opposed the civil rights-adjacent DEI practices of the Biden administration.
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Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday concerning DEI titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-based Opportunity.”
“Illegal DEI and DEIA policies not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding Federal civil-rights laws, they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,” the letter states.
