Dear Sangat Ji, 

Tomorrow, Harmeet Kaur Dhillon, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, faces her confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

In December, the Sikh Coalition sent two letters to Harmeet Ji. In the first letter, we identified several specific and important policy requests on issues that are within the authority of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division (DOJ CRT), which Harmeet Ji would lead as Assistant Attorney General. These issues are of longstanding concern to our organization and the Sikh community, and in many cases significantly also relevant to other communities. In the second letter, we discussed the issue of Indian transnational repression; though Ms. Dhillon’s role would not necessarily have direct jurisdiction over this issue, we believe she can and should use her voice to raise the profile of all violence against our community—including that coming from abroad.

Over the past two weeks, the Sikh Coalition has sent a series of questions to senators and committee staff on the Judiciary Committee that we believe are important for Harmeet Ji to answer in her hearing. Submitting such questions is a common practice, and one that the Sikh Coalition—and many other civil rights organizations on all sides of the political spectrum—have done for many nominees. You can view those questions here. These questions do not capture every Sikh’s view or perspective, but they are our good faith effort to understand Harmeet Ji’s past work and positions, and to understand how she would use her position as Assistant Attorney General to protect the civil rights of Sikhs and all people.

The nomination of Harmeet Ji has come with significant discussion, both within the Sikh community and the wider civil rights ecosystem. Given these conversations, we want to be clear and transparent about our approach to not just Harmeet Ji’s nomination and hearing, but our wider engagement with the Trump Administration. 

First, no individual, no political party, and no administration takes precedence over the needs of the panth.

The Sikh Coalition is a non-partisan, non-profit organization. All of our advocacy work is done in support of the U.S.-based sangat and not in conjunction with any candidate, elected official, or political party. In practice, that means we offer both substantive policy critiques of every administration and political party that is not operating in the benefit of the Sikh community, while also recognizing when progress is made. 

For four years, we took this approach with the Biden Administration; in 2024 alone, that included constructive criticism on a range of policy topics including transnational repression, asylum policies, and the National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate. In the same vein, we have already critiqued the Trump Administration on a wide range of policies, executive orders, and cabinet nominations. Should the Trump Administration support policies which defend and expand the civil rights of Sikh Americans, we will also recognize those.  

Specific to Harmeet Ji, we believe that the articulation of meaningful and substantive policy differences should not be viewed as a personal attack on her as an individual—just as those differences do not erase positive work that she has done. Harmeet Ji has a track record of effective advocacy on behalf of many sangat members, perhaps most importantly on the issue of workplace discrimination; she has done this in collaboration with the Sikh Coalition, other Sikh civil rights organizations, and in her own private capacity. 

Aside from being an articulation of issues we feel are important as we look ahead to 2025, the letter and questions mentioned above should also serve as a clear message to all sangat members whether they agree or disagree with Harmeet Ji’s nomination: we intend to hold her the same standards we would any individual who has purview over the DOJ CRT—if not higher standards, given her connection to the Sikh community and her knowledge of the civil rights issues at stake. It is our intention to measure the impact of those policies not just against the Sikh community, but other communities as well—which leads to the next point. 

Second, civil rights are not a “zero-sum” game, and the needs of Sikh Americans are not separate from the needs of other communities.

Generations of civil rights activists have come to understand that measures that do not protect everyone against discrimination only further it, and a victory in representation for one group that comes at the expense of representation for others is no victory at all. The moral imperative to stand for others as we seek justice for our own is also reflected in our own history; Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji literally gave his head to defend the rights of all who were being oppressed, regardless of their religious beliefs.

As a matter of principle, anti-hate crime laws shouldn’t just protect Sikhs and other religious minorities, but all protected classes including sexual orientation and gender identity. A legal victory that ensures a Sikh’s right to wear their dastaar at work must also provide the same protection for a Muslim woman and her hijab or a Jewish person and their yarmulke. And inclusive education measures—from curriculum content to anti-bullying policies—should celebrate and protect youth from all backgrounds. 

We see this in our work every day. In our ongoing efforts to ensure that our clients in the case against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) not be asked to choose between their career or their faith, we are working alongside several partner organizations to combat this policy because it impacts not just Sikh men who keep kesh, but also Muslims who maintain religious beards and Black men who need medical accommodations to avoid painful rashes from daily shaving. We also see other communities stand with our own in opposition to the hate, violence, and extremism we face. Just last year, 30 non-Sikh organizations signed onto a solidarity measure in support of H. Res. 1554, a U.S. House Resolution to recognize and condemn the Sikh Genocide.

Given the interconnected nature of our shared fight for justice, we must recognize that the wider civil rights ecosystem has raised significant concerns with the nomination of Harmeet Ji. This week, the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights (LCCHR), a coalition of more than 240 national civil and human rights organizations (of which we are a member) outlined their objections to Harmeet Ji’s record. While we may not agree with all 240 organizations in LCCHR on all matters, we do share in the belief that whoever leads DOJ CRT must protect the rights of all communities in America—and in truth, that responsibility should be all the more profound for Sikhs who are called to fight for sarbat da bhalla (the betterment of all).  

Harmeet Ji’s history of election denialism in the service of President Trump is, in our view, fundamentally at odds with DOJ CRT’s critical responsibility to safeguard voting rights. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, she served on the then-outgoing president’s legal team as he insisted without evidence that he had actually won; at one point, she told reporters that, “We’re waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court—of which the President has nominated three justices—to step in and do something.” We included voting rights in our letter, and this quotation in our suggested questions specifically, because we believe it is critically important.

We also profoundly disagree with Harmeet Ji’s public comments and legal work pertaining to the LGBTQ+ community.  The tenets of the U.S. Constitution make it clear that individuals of all gender identities—just like all political persuasions, economic backgrounds, immigration statuses, sexual orientations, any other variable category—deserve the right to live their lives with dignity and respect. Moreover, regardless of one's personal views, the LGBTQ+ community overlaps with the Sikh community; there are Sikhs of all sexual orientations and gender identities among our sangats, and their perspective—and whether or not their civil rights will be expanded, defended, or reduced—matters.   

Finally, no nominee or government official should be supported solely on their religion or race—nor should they be criticized on the basis of these identities. They must be judged on their merits.

Late last year we witnessed—and denounced—deeply xenophobic criticism of Harmeet Ji for leading Ardaas at the Republican National Convention. We also saw her face harassment and hate from Indian media and proxies who have labelled her as an extremist for having raised the factual reality that Sikhs in the United States are being targeted by the Government of India through transnational repression. Both of these identity-based attacks are unacceptable. 

We urge all examination of Harmeet’s qualifications to lead the DOJ CRT to be based on her track record and rhetoric, including the points enumerated above, with regards to civil rights and her priorities for the DOJ CRT going forward. We are confident that Harmeet Ji herself would agree that being a member of the Sikh community does not automatically qualify her for this job any more than it disqualifies her. 

Candidly, the history of the Sikh Coalition’s interaction with Harmeet Ji ranges from co-counseling on legal cases together to public disagreements on social media. But this is inevitable considering that the Sikh community is anything but a political or cultural monolith. Some Sikhs are conservative, others liberal, and many more fall somewhere in between or defy categorization entirely. What should bind us as Sikhs is an unwavering commitment to ideals and values rooted in Gurbani and our ithiaas. No individual, political party, or political ideology can or will take precedence over the values Sikhi is rooted in. 

It is our strong belief that those values will guide us to standing on the side of justice, in challenging oppression in all forms, and in navigating the coming years. 

In Chardi Kala,

Harman Singh
Executive Director
The Sikh Coalition