Harmeet Dhillon Joins Federal Department of Justice. She’s Connected to a Chico Suit over Parental Rights.

Last week, In a 52–45 vote with one Republican dissenting, the Senate confirmed President Trump’s nomination to appoint attorney Harmeet Dhillon as the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights. She’ll work under newly-appointed Attorney General, Pam Bondi.

Dhillon is the former chairwoman of the Republican Party’s San Francisco chapter. She made headlines in 2024 when she presented an ardas, or Sikh invocation, at the Republican National Convention. She’s also the founder of the nonprofit legal firm Center for American Liberty (CAL) and the Dhillon Law Group (DLG), a San Francisco based private law firm. 

Both CAL and DLG are part of the legal team representing North State mother Aurora Regino in her case against the Chico Unified School District (CUSD) over an alleged violation of her parental rights. Regino is challenging CUSD policy that allowed her child to use different pronouns in the classroom without informing Regino of the student’s request. The case, known as Regino v. Staley, was initially dismissed in 2023, then resurrected just days ago by a Federal Court of Appeals.  

As a frequent guest on Fox News, Dhillon has articulated her perspective as a conservative resident of San Francisco, forewarning that the city’s housing crisis will eventually undo the nation.

“When you look at the whole state of California,” Dhillon said during a Fox News segment with columnist Kurt Schlichter in 2022, “it’s actually a red state–it’s this blue loony strip on the coast… that’s doing all these crazy things.” 

Dhillon’s political background, and discontent with Governor Gavin Newsom, aligns well with the voter base of Shasta and it’s surrounding counties, which form a complicated mosaic within the politics of the larger state. Much of California’s far north is deeply conservative, making the area an outlier in a liberal state that’s been engaged in many fierce battles with the Trump administration since his inauguration.

Both CAL and DLG have participated in some of the most controversial civil cases California has seen in the past ten years, representing among others, worshipers who sued Governor Newsom over their right to gather amid COVID restrictions and San Jose residents challenging a city ordinance that imposed a tax on gun owners.

In the CFL case most relevant to the North State, the plaintiff Regino alleges that the CUSD’s policy of withholding information about her child’s new choice of pronouns violated her Constitutional Rights as a parent, in an attempt to “socially transition” her child without her knowledge. 

Regino’s case also claims that school staff are not equipped to deal with situations in which children present their genders differently at home and in the classroom, which the complaint describes as “inherently psychologically unhealthy.” In the lawsuit, Dhillon’s firm argues that allowing a student to use preferred pronouns at school, also known as “social transitioning,” could likely open the door to “drastic gender affirming care” that is “life-altering” without the parent’s knowledge.

While the complaint alleges that “social transitioning” is a form of medical treatment, medical clinicians use the term to refer to the non-medical and easily reversible elements of gender transition, which can also include using a new name or style of clothing.

The April 4 Federal Court of Appeals ruling that revived Regino’s case does not weigh in on whether the mother’s Constitutional rights were violated by CUSD’s policy. Instead, it said that the expectation the original court had of Regino’s legal argument–that it should be based on past caselaw–was unreasonable. 

In other words, Regino should have been permitted to make her case without having to rely on previous lawsuits as precedent, the Appeals Court ruled, emphasizing that her attorneys can also utilize tradition and history to try to prove Regino’s legal claim that her rights were violated.

The federal court ruling also emphasizes that Regino’s parental rights are not unlimited and are instead “confined by the interests of the state.” A lower court will now pick up the case and reconsider the validity of Regino’s legal argument.

Regino v. Staley has been a pivotal case in the legal battle over “parents’ rights,” an ideological divide which has also factored significantly into local school board elections across Shasta County. The case lays similar legal groundwork to another lawsuit playing out in Shasta County.

In August of 2024, Anderson Union High School District (AUHSD) joined Chino Valley Unified School District (CVUSD), the Orange County Board of Education (OCBE), and several individual parents to sue the State of California over the SAFETY Act.

The new California law is a response to recently-updated policies by AUHSD and a few other California districts, which required proactive information sharing by staff about any “official or unofficial” conversation related to name or gender, a practice which circumvents California law.

Importantly, the SAFETY Act does not stop school districts’ from informing parents when their child requests to express their gender differently at school. Instead the law prohibits schools from mandating that staff members involve parents, regardless of the student’s home circumstances.

Advocates say the SAFETY Act prevents the “forced outings” of trans students who come from unsafe homes, while opponents argue the law fundamentally undermines parents’ rights over their children once they’ve crossed the threshold into the classroom. For those in the latter group, Dhillon’s confirmation to the DOJ could come as a welcome development, signaling further federal support in a pitched battle between the federal and California state governments over gender.

AUHSD’s suit does not name a specific child that has been affected by the SAFETY Act, angling the case more along the lines of possible future harm. But AUHSD’s legal counsel, Emily Rae, is hopeful that the Federal Court of Appeals’ recent decision in the Chico case will bode well for the plaintiffs in the joint AUHSD lawsuit.

In an email to Shasta Scout, Rae emphasized her belief that the recent judgment in Regino v. Staley “positively impacts AUHSD’s lawsuit challenging [the SAFETY Act] because, the Ninth Circuit judge reiterated that parents have the constitutional right to direct the upbringing and education of their children.” 

Rae is also optimistic about how Dhillon’s new role in the federal government could impact policies related to public school education in Shasta County.

“We hope that Harmeet Dhillon’s appointment will have a larger impact on the goals of not only AUHSD’s board members and parents, but school districts and parents across California and the country who want to ensure that parents remain involved in and aware of the important life events of their children.” 

In her new role at the Department of Justice, Dhillon will oversee the Civil Rights Division which is responsible for upholding the civil and constitutional rights of the nation’s most vulnerable populations, including those facing discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, disability, religion, familial status, national origin, and citizenship status.

---

---

In 2020, the Supreme Court passed a 6-3 ruling that expanded the definition of sex-based protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity. Until recently, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Department’s website described “sex” discrimination as being related to “pregnancy, sexual orientation, and gender identity.”

In the last few months, under a Trump Executive Order, references to gender-based discrimination were quietly removed from the federal DOJ website.

4.10.25 3:07 pm: We have updated the story to clarify a statement in Regino’s lawsuit related to the psychological health of students.

---

Do you have a correction to share? Email us: editor@shastascout.org.