SMITHFIELD — Perseverance and a passion for human rights have helped Harmeet Dhillon, an attorney and Republican Party activist, advance in her career — and life.
“In my life, what I found is that obstacles are simply opportunities for you to grow and make yourself stronger,” Dhillon said. “That’s really been a good lesson to be taught early on.”
Hers is an immigrant family from India, Dhillon said. “My parents brought us to the United States, my little brother and I, in the early 1970s,” she said. “I started my education in the Bronx when my dad was in his medical residency program there in New York.”
In 1975, her family moved from New York to Smithfield.
“It was quite a culture shock,” Dhillon said, “going from the Bronx, a very culturally diverse community … to Smithfield, where my dad began his medical practice as a private orthopedic surgeon.”
When she started school in Johnston County, she was bullied for being different, Dhillon said. “We were different; my dad and my brother wore turbans,” she said. “I had long hair, and I dressed funny. I didn’t have all the same designer stuff as my classmates. There was a lot of bullying and teasing.”
“I remember that it was difficult,” she said. “I was kind of an outsider, and I was kind of a nerd also. … I always read a lot of books, and I always had the answer.”
Although the bullying hurt, Dhillon never let it defeat her ambitions. “In India, people from our religious minority of Sikhs are a small minority,” she said. “So you really have to believe very strongly in yourself and your values. Popularity isn’t really much of a factor in your life.”
Her parents raised her to be proud of who she is, Dhillon said. “My family had very strong values, and we pray together every day,” she said. “We believe what we believe. We believe in ourselves and our self-worth.”
Instead of focusing on the negative in school, she focused on what she enjoyed, which was learning, Dhillon said. “I ended up skipping the eighth grade,” she said, “because I was sort of ahead of my class with academics.”
She found herself a 12-year-old in ninth grade at Smithfield-Selma High School, Dhillon said. “I was younger, but interestingly, I think my classmates actually in the ninth grade treated me a lot nicer than when I had been in elementary school,” she said.
She attended SSS for one year before enrolling at Ravenscroft, a private school in Raleigh, for a year. She would leave there after a year to attend the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics for the rest of high school.
When it came time for college, “I initially wanted to follow in my family’s footsteps,” Dhillon said. “Most of the adults in my family are in the medical profession … so I thought I was going to go to medical school.”
Dhillon researched a dual program where she could get degrees in medicine and law, but her plans would change. “I went to Dartmouth College, and I was taking pre-med classes,” she recalled. “At Dartmouth, I fell in with conservative political activists. My parents had also been very politically active in Smithfield. We had fundraisers for Sen. Jesse Helms at our house and other politicians.”
A particular moment at Dartmouth prompted Dhillon to shelve medicine entirely in favor of law.
“My newspaper ended up suing our university for suspending three of my classmates at the newspaper,” said Dhillon, who was the paper’s editor. “We won that lawsuit. So that impressed me at a pretty early age that even as a college student, you could take on this 200-year-old-plus Ivy League institution with the help of a good lawyer.”
Dhillon, more specifically, wanted to help the underdogs. “We have a very strong constitutional system here in our country, a very strong system of laws,” she said. “It’s an equalizing force; it lets any little guy have the right to be vindicated if they have a good lawyer.”
She has been able to help little guys do just that, Dhillon said. “Throughout my career, I’ve been able to use my law degree to help the underdog and help underrepresented people stand up for constitutional values,” she said. “That’s been a hallmark of my career.”
Dhillon started her career like most lawyers — at the bottom and learning a lot. “When you get out of law school, you know, you really have to gain skills,” she said. “You don’t just come out fully baked. You have to take some training and learn from other people.”
“I was a law clerk for a federal judge for a year in the circuit that actually covers North Carolina,” she said.
After learning as much as she could at larger firms, Dhillon started her own because she wanted the freedom to pursue those underdog cases. “You can’t do the kind of work that I do unless you have a sympathetic boss,” she said. “And I wasn’t finding one out there. So I created one. I am the boss.”
Dhillon didn’t stop there though. “The last two decades are where I’ve really had a chance to do the things that interest me,” she said. “Now, I’ve even built up a nonprofit, the Center for American Liberty, that allows other lawyers to do public interest litigation and raises millions of dollars from the public every year to help underdogs fight First Amendment cases.”
She has never really had political ambitions, Dhillon said. “I’ve mainly been a volunteer in politics,” she said. “I volunteer because it’s my way in California, which is not a red state and does not align with my views. But … being actively involved in volunteer politics is a way to give back to my country.”
It’s crucial for her to give back, Dhillon said. “For me and my value system, giving back to a community that has given me so much is very important,” she said. “So that’s my way of doing it. I pursue issues including the First Amendment but also election integrity.”
She is well known for her work in election litigation and election integrity, Dhillon said. “My law firm represented President Trump at the Supreme Court on the Colorado case, where Colorado tried to keep him off the ballot,” she said. “And we won that case.”
That, by the way, was not her first case before the Supreme Court, Dhillon said. “I’ve even gotten the chance to argue before the court on three of the cases that we handled during COVID about religious liberties in California,” she said. “The court didn’t even hear arguments because they granted our appeals and vacated the lower court rulings.”
Dhillon, who has appeared occasionally on Fox News as a legal analyst, is proud to be where she is. “I’m actually not sure there is a next step,” she said. “I feel like a partner at a well-respected law firm that represents presidential candidates and former presidents and fights for the most important issues in the United States, I feel like that’s the pinnacle.
“I mean, what else do you want as a lawyer than to be able to handle the most interesting cases for the best clients? I love what I do. I don’t really have the ambition to do anything else. … The law firm is going to continue on as a home for me, probably for the rest of my career.”
