Ex-DOJ civil rights attorneys continue their work ‘just not in the division’

Former Justice Department employees recently established an initiative to track the Trump administration’s overhauls to federal civil rights enforcement. 

Regan Rush, the director and editor-in-chief of Red Line for Civil Rights, served as a senior official in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division but left government after being demoted in 2025. She said that the project is a “continuation of the division’s work, just not in the division.” 

“Many people who do civil rights and social justice work, there's just something that burns inside of us whenever we see inequality and we see injustice around us. It is something that once you start keeping an eye out for it's like a radar that goes off everywhere,” Rush said. “When you see that, me and many others just feel like we want to do something about that. That's what drove us to work in federal civil rights enforcement and drove us to continue working in enforcement post-government.”

Red Line for Civil Rights is housed under Democracy Forward, a nonprofit that is behind many of the lawsuits against the Trump administration and that has provided other opportunities for former feds to continue working on public policy. 

The project has identified 55 civil rights cases that the DOJ under Trump has shut down, dismissed or reversed its position on, including: 

• Dropping the prosecution of two county police officers in Tennessee for civil rights violations in relation to an alleged beating of a 61-year-old during an arrest and apparent attempts to cover up the misconduct. 
• Arguing that four Black- or Latino-majority districts in Texas constitute illegal racial gerrymanders, which led to the state conducting a mid-decade redraw of its congressional map that favors Republicans. 
• Withdrawing support for several lawsuits seeking to preserve youth access to gender affirming policies and medical care. 

DOJ did not respond to a request for comment on the initiative. 

While the Trump administration has targeted swaths of the federal government for reform, DOJ’s Civil Rights Division has been particularly impacted. 

More than 75% of its attorneys have left the component since January 2025. Many departing employees accused the administration of putting political pressure on the division, such as by prioritizing Second Amendment and anti-trans cases as well as those combating alleged antisemitism on college campuses.