The Trump administration has told the Civil Rights division at the Justice Department to stop pursuing any new indictments, cases, or settlements related to civil rights violations, effectively shutting down the division just days into Trump’s second term.

A letter to the acting head of the division obtained by The Washington Postorders her 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 order and a separate memo sent to Kathleen Wolfe, acting supervisor of the Civil Rights division, freezes action on new cases and directs her to notify the DOJ’s chief of staff of any consent decrees obtained within the last 90 days, indicating a focus on police abuse cases pursued by the DOJ in connection with violations that sparked Black Lives Matter protests.

Those were a focus of the Biden administration in the aftermath of the 2020 police shootings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. Oversight agreements were reached with both those cities in the waning days of Biden’s presidency; neither has been approved by a judge.

The directives said the new administration “may wish to reconsider” such agreements related to their investigations.

The Justice Department pursued a dozen investigations into state and local law enforcement agencies during Biden’s term and issued findings in nine of them. 

The halt to new work by the Civil Rights division includes cases of LGBTQ+ civil rights violations. Guidance from the White House and DOJ outlines protections provided in law against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex traits based on the Supreme Court’s decision in Bostock v. Clayton County. As of Friday, an explanation of that guidance was still availableon the DOJ website.

The freeze and review orders, conveyed by Chad Mizelle, the DOJ’s new chief of staff, said the halt was “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.”

Trump’s pick to head up the DOJ’s Civil Rights division is Harmeet Dhillon, a prominent election denier with a history of anti-woke and anti-LGBTQ+ activism.

Damon Hewitt, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, called the freeze “beyond unusual — it’s unprecedented.”

“We’ve never seen this before at this scale with any transfer of power, regardless of the ideology of any incoming president or administration,” he told The Post. “This should make Americans both angry and deeply worried. This is more than just a changing course of philosophy — this is exactly what most people [in the civil rights community] feared: a Justice Department that was created to protect civil rights literally abdicating its duty and responsibility to protect Americans from all forms of discrimination.”

Trump has advocated for aggressive action by police and endorsed “extraordinarily rough” tactics to quell protests. This week he pardoned two Washington, D.C. police officers convicted in the 2020 shooting death of a young Black man, Karon Hylton-Brown, at the height of Black Lives Matter protests.