Harmeet Dhillon discusses elections, parental rights

Jan. 18—Civil rights attorney and former chair of the California Republican Party Harmeet Dhillon will serve as a guest speaker for the Sutter County Republican Central Committee's annual Lincoln dinner on Jan. 25 in Yuba City, highlighting several issues that are important to conservative voters.

Dhillon, who immigrated to the U.S. from India at age 2, is a nationally recognized attorney and political activist known for her involvement in various high-profile legal cases and her role as a national committeewoman of the Republican National Committee for California.

She is also the founder and CEO of the Center for American Liberty, a nonprofit organization that leverages a network of attorneys to represent civil rights issues. The group has spearheaded numerous high-profile cases, most notably opposing COVID-19 pandemic restrictions and social and medical gender transitioning for minors.

"During COVID, we filed more lawsuits than any other organization in the United States to challenge governors' executive order overreach including 17 lawsuits against Gov. Gavin Newsom to challenge everything from bans on hair salons operating to small family owned businesses shutting down while big chain stores were allowed to flourish," Dhillon said. "Since that time, our nonprofit and our firm have been well known for leading the charge to sue physicians who mutilate children with transgender surgeries. It is our legal position that they are not legally able to consent to these surgeries."

In starting her legal career, Dhillon attended Dartmouth College and later studied at the University of Virginia School of Law. Her interest in conservative issues was sparked during her time in college, she said.

Dhillon served as editor in chief of Dartmouth's conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review and later served on the editorial board of The Virginia Law Review. Prior to attending law school, Dhillon worked with conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation for a year where she focused on policy issues and served as an assistant editor for the group's publication Policy Review Magazine.

After earning her law degree, Dhillon clerked for Judge Paul Niemeyer of the United States Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals for one year and went on to practice with international law firms for a decade.

Dhillon started her own firm Dhillon Law Group in 2006, which covers several practice areas including First Amendment cases, business law, and campaign and election matters.

"Our firm has grown to about 24 lawyers nationwide in five offices. We do a lot of election law and political law in our business life. We represent the campaign of President Donald Trump this year and last year," Dhillon said.

Her political career began after moving to San Francisco during the 2004 election where she worked as a volunteer for the Bush-Cheney campaign.

"I held events at my home like debate watching parties in the fall of that year. I was then invited to join the San Francisco Central Committee in 2005. I rose through the ranks to become communications vice chair and eventually the chair of that committee," Dhillon said.

She ran for her position as national committeewoman with the Republican National Committee in 2016, challenging the incumbent member and serving on the committee for eight years.

Dhillon was also frequently featured as a guest commentator for Fox News until April 2023. She has represented and continues to represent former host Tucker Carlson in several legal matters.

The Appeal spoke with Dhillon on Monday to discuss key issues that she has highlighted in the past and plans to discuss during her appearance on Jan. 25.

Q: Per your appearance with the Sutter County Republican Central Committee, what are some key issues you plan to address? Of these, which do you believe have the greatest impact on the Yuba-Sutter area?

A: It's an election year. What we have seen in California is a microcosm — or let's call it the canary in the coal mine — of what's happening in the United States. By cutting our quality-of-life laws including enforcement of laws against stealing, we've created a statewide crisis where drug stores and convenience stores and stores that many of us have come to take for granted have had to shut down because Democrats — exclusively Democrats here in our state — have made it legal for people to steal. I live in San Francisco. We have terrible quality-of-life issues here related to rampant homelessness here on the streets, rampant open-air drug markets, foreign drug traffickers ruining lives on a daily basis. We have a notorious open border here in California which impacts quality of life throughout the state. We have ruinously high taxes, and particularly regressive taxes like gasoline taxes. I consider the solar new building mandate to be a tax that adds some would say $80,000 to the cost of housing starts.

California is driving the taxpayers, people who grew up here, out of the state. What's replacing them is people who are coming here illegally and people who are coming here legally from other states to seek that welfare and easy drug access life on our coast. We really have two states. Where I'm coming to speak, the interior of the state is still a stronghold of farming communities, traditional values, and people who work hard, but they are also impacted by both illegal immigration and the high cost of living in California. California's refusal to accommodate the need of the farmers in our state for easy access to water, the elevation of environmental extremism over quality-of-life issues and the need to grow food for Americans has really impacted the Central Valley.

All of these issues are important when we consider that it's an election year and we have an opportunity this year to change the course of this country back to a more rational direction. My goal is to urge everybody in the audience to get active with whatever candidate they want to support, and most importantly, vote. What I've seen myself in almost 20 years of activism in the California Republican Party is that so many former conservatives have given up and they think their vote doesn't count and the overwhelming numerical advantage as well as money advantage Democrats have in this state makes it pointless. That's a self fulfilling prophecy. ... California is worth fighting for. I'm fighting and I want to encourage my fellow California citizens and particularly Republican activists to fight meaningfully.

Q: Your firm is representing Donald Trump in recent efforts to remove him from the ballot. What is the status of these lawsuits and how is your firm approaching these cases?

A: We have defeated all of these lawsuits that have been filed so far except for the Colorado case where at the trial court level we prevailed, but the Colorado Supreme Court made a decision which we factually and legally completely disagree with. In Maine, it hasn't even been judicially reviewed. The Secretary of State just made her own crazy decision to keep him off the ballot, disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters in her state.

We feel these are very anti-democratic efforts by judges who are not popularly elected. It's really not their role to decide who qualifies. The historical precedent doesn't support judges being able to make these calls regarding a presidential candidate. We feel very good about the law, the facts and history being on our side. I predict that if we are able to prevail in the Supreme Court of Colorado, then Maine will follow suit because they have to. The court is going to rule, hopefully, with a very clear ruling that all of these efforts are either legitimate or illegitimate.

Q: What sort of legal landscape could the nation face if Trump were to be taken off the ballot?

A: First of all, that wouldn't happen throughout the country. It's possible that other states could follow suit. It's highly likely — I would say 100% likely — that some red states would follow suit to remove President Biden from the ballot because of his policies that encourage human trafficking and sexual trafficking across the southern border is also viewed by many as an invasion of this country and a violation of this country's basic constitutional promise to the people to uphold the Constitution and protect our borders. I would not be surprised — I would actually expect — that President Biden would be taken off the ballot. I think there will be quite an unfortunate situation in this country. I hesitate to even predict what's in my mind. I hope it doesn't come to pass. I hope the court and the Supreme Court in the Colorado case does the right thing and allows the voters to decide who they want to be president. That's how our system is set up.

We have to remember the historical precedent of the Fourteenth Amendment. It was passed at a time when there was a civil war and Americans were taking up arms against each other, and seeking to challenge the very concept of our unity as a nation. To apply that precedent with no enforcing mechanism to this factual situation of a political rally First Amendment speech that got out of hand on Jan. 6, (2021), I think is factually and legally untenable. I think it's very unfortunate that partisan Democrats have not played chess here and figured out what's going to happen if their crazy effort to take Trump out this way succeeds. It's not going to stop there, it's just going to start there. We're going to have people kept off the ballot for all kinds of reasons that the Founders and the people who passed the Fourteenth Amendment to bring us back together never envisioned us using it to tear us apart.

We are not in a civil war in this country. We hope those days never return. There's no precedent to keep him off the ballot.

Q: Your firm has also been involved in cases opposing social transitioning for students' gender identities in schools, citing parental rights as the driving force. What does parental rights mean in a legal and social context?

A: The United States Supreme Court has ruled that parents have the ultimate authority to determine all things that have to do with the education of their children. That's the basis for our legal challenges in multiple school districts, concealing from parents the social transition of their children. In the case of Monterey County Spreckels Union School District, we won a $100,000 judgment for our clients there who had a situation where the girl was being groomed toward transgender identity by school teachers. That was concealed from the parents, and we won. In the Chico Unified School District, the federal court reached the opposite result, so we're now in the Ninth Circuit (Court of Appeals). Major players in this field from across the country are weighing in on this case, which is Regino v. Staley.

It's the same legal theory. We believe that the Supreme Court precedent is very clear. The Attorney General of California Rob Bonta put a tweet yesterday and he said that it's wrong under state law to out children, but what he's really saying is that it's legal for schools to conceal things from parents, which is, constitutionally and otherwise, completely wrong and upside down. We're not going to let that stand and we will challenge it all the way to the Supreme Court if we have to and we have the opportunity.

Beyond that, we move from those cases to challenging doctors, and our position as I mentioned earlier is that this is impossible. It's impossible for a child or their parents to consent to these surgeries when the facts are not disclosed to these families. The factual record that we're developing is very good in these cases. I feel like we're going to be making history with these cases.

Q: In the case of social transitionings, schools are aiming to be a safe place for students that may face abuse or discrimination if outed to their parents. What do you say in response to that? Is there consideration for children's rights to privacy in these cases?

A: I think I heard a lot of "mays" and "mights" and the Supreme Court has said clearly that it is the law that parents must be informed of these issues. The speculation of activists is inconsistent with the rights of parents.

Children have no right to privacy from their parents. Children don't have the right to conceal things from their parents. That's why we don't allow them to emancipate themselves. We don't allow children to drive under the age of 16. We don't allow children to do a lot of things in our society. They don't have a right to privacy from their parents. That's the law. In the instances of documented abuse — and I said documented; we don't presume abuse and we don't presume discrimination — then the state can step in and help, but what we're seeing is upside down here. We're seeing school teachers who are pushing a particular radical agenda are assuming that there will be abuse and that is false. In fact, we have people throughout our society who are identifying however they want and their parents supported. The point is parents have a right to know. Parents have a right to be informed and there is no right of children to keep things from their parents, or school teachers to keep things from parents. It's the law.