Harmeet Kaur Dhillon (born 1969) is an American lawyer and Republican Party official.
She is the former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party, and a National Committeewoman of the Republican National Committee for California.
Dhillon was born in Chandigarh, India to a Punjabi Sikh family in 1969.
Her family moved to the United States when she was a child so that her father could pursue a career as an orthopedic surgeon.
Her family eventually settled in Smithfield, North Carolina.
After finishing high school at age 16, she attended Dartmouth College.
She became a writer and eventually editor-in-chief at The Dartmouth Review.
During her tenure at The Review, a satirical column criticizing the school's President and the policies of his administration generated controversy.
In the column, President James O. Freedman, who was Jewish, was likened to Adolf Hitler due to the alleged discriminatory policies of his administration against conservatives.
These policies were referred to by the column as a “holocaust” and the “Final Solution to the Conservative Problem”.
The column also characterized conservatives at Dartmouth as being “deported in cattle cars in the night”.
Dhillion claimed that the column sought to draw parallels between so-called “liberal fascism” and fascism.
She stated that there was no intention to minimize the horrors of the Holocaust, rather the column sought to demonstrate the mistreatment that conservative students faced under President Freedman's administration.
After graduating from Dartmouth, she attended law school, graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law where she was on the editorial board of the Virginia Law Review.
After law school, she clerked for Judge Paul Victor Niemeyer of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.
2008
In 2008, Dhillon ran for a seat in the California Assembly.
She lost the race, garnering 17% of the vote in the traditionally Democratic district.
2012
She ran for the California Senate in 2012, but was again unsuccessful.
She served as the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party.
Dhillon became a board member of the northern California chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union after the September 11 attacks, in connection with her work on discrimination against Sikhs and other South Asians, and stayed on the board for three years.
She has been heavily criticized by Republican activists for her ties to the ACLU, as well as her past contributions to the political campaigning of Kamala Harris.
2013
Dhillon was chosen to be a member of the California Republican Party's Board in 2013; she became a national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee in 2016.
2016
She also gave the opening prayer at the 2016 Republican National Convention.
2017
In early 2017, Dhillon interviewed to be the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Department of Justice.
She was not nominated for the position.
Dhillon led the successful effort to remove Chad Mayes as the California State Assembly Republican caucus leader in August 2017.
Dhillon filed a lawsuit in April 2017 against University of California, Berkeley on behalf of the Berkeley College Republicans (BCR) and Young America's Foundation for freedom of speech issues, particularly the school cancelling Ann Coulter's speech quoting security reasons.
2018
She is the founder of a law practice called Dhillon Law Group Inc. In 2018, she helped launch the 501(c)(3) nonprofit Center for American Liberty, which does legal work related to civil liberties.
She is a regular guest on Fox News.
During the coronavirus pandemic, she filed numerous unsuccessful lawsuits to halt the implementation of stay-at-home-orders and other restrictions.
She criticized face masks requirements, called for the re-opening of the economy, and opposed mail in voting.
In the January 2023 election, Dhillon unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Ronna McDaniel as chairperson of the Republican National Committee.
The suit was settled in December 2018, with Dhillon arguing that it had forced the university to change its policies about controversial speakers, whereas the university maintained that it had already been following the amended policies before.
2019
On July 11, 2019, Dhillon gave a speech at the President Trump's "Social Media Summit".
Dhillon is a co-chair of Women for Trump.
She has described Laura Ingraham as a "long-time mentor."
In December 2022, Dhillon announced her candidacy to replace Ronna McDaniel as chairperson of the Republican National Committee.
In January 2023, Dhillon reportedly faced a whisper campaign from supporters of McDaniel and of Mike Lindell focusing on her Sikh faith.
On January 11, 2023, McDaniel disavowed the attacks, citing her own minority Mormon faith.
On January 27, 2023, Dhillon would lose to McDaniel in a 111–51 vote.
