Mass Resignations at DOJ: What Civil Service Protections Allow and Prohibit

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The resignations—spanning both the Civil Rights Division in Washington and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota—weren’t routine departures. Prosecutors viewed this as a fundamental betrayal of their professional obligations.

What can job protections that prevent firing for political reasons do when political appointees decide that investigating a federal officer’s use of deadly force isn’t worth the department’s time?

The Minneapolis ICE Shooting

On January 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fired three shots at Renee Good’s vehicle during an immigration enforcement operation. The Department of Homeland Security immediately said Good had “used her car as a weapon.”

Video evidence told a different story. Multiple analyses by the New York Times and ABC News showed Ross positioning himself in front of Good’s vehicle before firing through the windshield and driver’s side window. Video evidence shows her wheels turned or angled as she accelerated. Eyewitnesses described her trying to leave, not attack. One told PBS NewsHour: “I did not even think there was a risk of her hitting anybody.” Another said an agent “stepping in front of her vehicle” before shooting “her through her windshield in the face.”

The Civil Rights Division was created to investigate precisely this type of incident. For decades—under Republican and Democratic administrations alike—the division has examined whether federal officers violated constitutional protections when using deadly force.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced there was “currently no basis for a criminal civil rights investigation.” That decision came before prosecutors with expertise in civil rights law had conducted any meaningful analysis.

Prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division had volunteered to drop everything else to investigate. Leadership told them to stand down.

Mass Resignations

At least six senior prosecutors in the Criminal Section of the Civil Rights Division left their positions. Most held supervisor positions. The division’s criminal section chief was among them.

In Minnesota, at least six more prosecutors left the U.S. Attorney’s Office, including the vast majority of the leadership team. Joseph H. Thompson, the First Assistant U.S. Attorney, was the most prominent departure.

Thompson and at least four other prosecutors—Harry Jacobs, Melinda Williams, and Thomas Calhoun-Lopez among them—didn’t recuse themselves from the case. They resigned entirely. That distinction matters. It signals they couldn’t work in an office they believed had been fundamentally compromised.

What Civil Service Protections Don’t Cover

The federal civil service system exists to insulate employees from partisan pressure. You can’t be fired for supporting the opposition party. You can’t be removed based on personal animus. The Merit Systems Protection Board—the government board that hears cases when federal workers are fired unfairly—was created to hear appeals when employees face unjustified termination.

But those protections don’t cover being told not to investigate something you believe warrants investigation.

Prosecutors facing directives they find professionally objectionable have three options: comply and keep your job, refuse and face potential discipline which you can challenge at the MSPB—a process that could take years and might not succeed—or resign.

The prosecutors in Minnesota and Washington chose to resign. By resigning, they preserved their professional integrity and avoided complicity in what they viewed as a politicized decision. But they also surrendered the civil service protections that theoretically exist to shield them from this type of pressure.

A resignation ends the employment relationship. There’s no unfair treatment to challenge, no MSPB review to seek. The protection system works only if you stay in the fight long enough to invoke it. These prosecutors decided the cost of staying—participating in what they saw as a cover-up—was too high.

From an institutional perspective, that’s a capitulation. It removes from the organization the people who might have challenged improper directives through formal channels. It deprives the civil service system of the opportunity to function as intended: as a check on political power.

Departure from Decades of Practice

During Trump’s first term, Attorney General Bill Barr opened an investigation into George Floyd’s death. The DOJ ultimately charged four Minneapolis officers under Section 242.

These weren’t liberal administrations pursuing progressive agendas. Republican Justice Departments recognized that investigating federal officer use of deadly force is a basic institutional responsibility, necessary for maintaining public confidence in law enforcement.

The current administration’s position isn’t about prosecutorial priorities or resource allocation. It actively decided not to investigate—a conclusion reached before prosecutors with civil rights expertise had conducted any preliminary analysis.

Prosecutorial Discretion Versus Professional Responsibility

Prosecutors have discretion about which cases to pursue. Resources are finite. An administration can establish priorities and shift resources.

But there’s a difference between setting priorities and preventing investigation of matters that fall squarely within an agency’s legal power granted by law and established practice.

The Civil Rights Division’s authority to investigate federal officer use of deadly force spans administrations of both parties across decades. This isn’t a case of prosecutors declining to prioritize something. It’s prosecutors being told they can’t investigate something that’s their job.

The American Bar Association Model Rules of Professional Conduct establish that prosecutors have a special obligation to ensure the legal system works fairly. Rule 3.8 says prosecutors shouldn’t pursue cases unsupported by probable cause. But prosecutors also have an obligation to investigate crimes when there’s reason to believe one happened.

Prosecutors in the Civil Rights Division understood themselves to have a professional responsibility to conduct preliminary analysis—particularly when video evidence contradicted the officer’s justification for using deadly force.

Leadership prevented them from doing that analysis. Not deprioritized. Prevented.

Federal Blockade of State Investigation

The Trump administration didn’t decline to investigate alone. It actively blocked Minnesota state authorities from conducting their own investigation.

The FBI informed Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that the investigation would be led solely by the FBI and that the BCA would no longer have access to case materials, scene evidence, or investigative interviews. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem argued that Minnesota “doesn’t have any jurisdiction” to investigate.

Minnesota has homicide statutes and state civil rights laws that could apply. The Supreme Court has long held that states retain shared authority to investigate criminal matters unless Congress has explicitly stated that federal law takes priority or federal interests are so important that state involvement would conflict with federal purposes.

This goes beyond prosecutors’ power to choose which cases to pursue. It affirmatively blocks another sovereign government from investigating potential violations of its own laws. The jurisdictional claim creates a vacuum where no one investigates whether a federal officer violated someone’s constitutional protections.

Broader Transformation of the Civil Rights Division

The Good investigation resignations aren’t isolated. They’re the culmination of months of upheaval within the Civil Rights Division.

The division was created in 1957 to investigate and prosecute civil rights violations, particularly when state and local officials refused to secure constitutional protections. Over decades, it expanded to encompass investigations into law enforcement use of force, investigations into whether police departments have systematic problems, voting rights enforcement, and religious freedom protections.

Under Harmeet Dhillon’s leadership, the division has been fundamentally reshaped. Former officials report pressure to avoid investigating federal agencies and their personnel. Cases involving potential violations of rights by federal agents have become particularly fraught.

Hundreds of DOJ attorneys have left or been forced out over the past year. In the Eastern District of Virginia, key resignations have impeded prosecutions of matters the administration views as targeting Trump’s political opponents. In other U.S. Attorney’s Offices, resignations have disrupted significant prosecutions that were far advanced.

Limits of Civil Service Protections

Civil service protections protect employees against removal based on partisan affiliation, against retaliation for lawful whistleblower activity, against discipline based on personal animus.

These protections don’t guard against directives employees find professionally objectionable. They don’t protect against the implicit threat that refusal to comply might result in discipline or removal. They don’t require that employers avoid creating conditions so intolerable that reasonable employees feel compelled to resign.

An employee claiming to have been forced to quit by making conditions unbearable bears a heavy burden of proof. You have to show not that directives were disagreeable but that they violated specific legal or regulatory requirements. A general disagreement with prosecutorial priorities, even one grounded in professional ethics, may not meet the legal standard.

The prosecutors who left effectively accepted that civil service protections, while they exist on paper, were insufficient to protect them against the situation they faced. Professional integrity won out over institutional position. But it means the protection system failed to function as a check on political power.

Available Accountability Mechanisms

Prosecutors who believe decisions are driven by improper political considerations can file complaints with the Office of Inspector General, raise concerns through official channels within the department, speak to Congress through whistleblower channels, or consult attorney ethics authorities about their professional obligations.

Each mechanism has significant limitations. The Inspector General can investigate but can’t override prosecutorial decisions or order investigations that DOJ leadership has declined to pursue. Congressional oversight is constrained by classified information concerns and by the fact that Congress can’t direct specific prosecutorial decisions. Attorney ethics authorities can opine on professional obligations but can’t force the Justice Department to comply.

The resignations represent a form of accountability—the departure of experienced professionals who could no longer work within the department’s new parameters. But it’s a costly form of accountability. The department loses experienced prosecutors. The individuals lose their jobs and positions.

It may be the most significant accountability mechanism available when the decision-makers themselves control the other accountability institutions.

Institutional Independence and Federal Law Enforcement

The Justice Department has long been understood, at least in theory, as an institution committed to equal application of law rather than as an instrument of executive political will. Civil service protections were designed to contribute to this independence by insulating employees from purely partisan pressure.

The resignations suggest these protections don’t fully work.

A political appointee can decide not to investigate matters, and employees can’t force investigation if their supervisors decline to authorize it. The protections that exist—protection against removal for partisan affiliation, whistleblower protections, access to the MSPB—help only in limited situations. They don’t require investigation of particular matters. They don’t prevent supervisors from directing subordinates to refrain from investigating.

The situation is particularly concerning because it involves federal law enforcement. If the Justice Department declines to investigate whether federal officers have violated constitutional protections, there’s no other agency with the same power to investigate with the same institutional resources and legal tools. State authorities may investigate, but as the Good case demonstrates, federal law enforcement can actively prevent state investigators from doing their own investigation.

The combination of the federal government taking over authority that states would normally have and federal disinclination to investigate creates a vacuum. Federal officers may act free of meaningful legal accountability.

Minnesota Governor Tim Walz called Thompson “a principled public servant who spent more than a decade achieving justice for Minnesotans.” He warned: “This is the latest sign that President Trump is pushing nonpartisan professionals out of the Department of Justice and replacing them with his sycophants.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar called the resignations “a loss for our state and for public safety” and warned that “prosecutions should not be driven by politics.”

What the Resignations Reveal

The prosecutors who left made a choice that prioritized professional principle over institutional position. Their departures represent both a statement about the limits on prosecutors’ power to choose which cases to pursue and an acceptance that those boundaries, while they exist in theory, provide limited practical protection against political pressure.

Whether civil service protections should be strengthened to prevent such situations is a question Congress may eventually need to address. The repeated cycle of mass resignations suggests current protections may be inadequate to maintain the institutional independence the Justice Department’s role in the legal system is meant to ensure.

The broader question is whether the American civil service system can function as designed—as a check on executive power through professionals committed to law and institutional integrity—when a political administration is determined to reshape those institutions according to its own priorities and willing to accept the departures that result.

The Good investigation suggests the answer may depend on whether sufficient numbers of professionals remain willing to stay and fight for institutional independence, or whether they conclude that resignation is the only available path to integrity.

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