AG Bondi directed DOJ Civil Rights Division to dismiss Title VII disparate-impact enforcement suits against police and fire departments

On February 26, 2025, Attorney General Pam Bondi directed the Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division to dismiss multiple active enforcement lawsuits brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act against police departments and fire departments that had been accused of discriminatory hiring practices. The dismissed cases had alleged that standard aptitude tests and physical fitness tests produced racially and gender-disparate outcomes — a violation of the disparate-impact theory of liability that the Supreme Court recognized in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971). Affected jurisdictions included the City of Durham, North Carolina, and the Maryland State Police. The dismissals were announced via a DOJ press release framing them as advancing President Trump's mandate to end "illegal DEI policies," although the underlying enforcement actions had not involved diversity quotas but rather the standard federal method of challenging employment screening devices that produce statistically significant racial disparities without a demonstrated job-related justification.

Disparate-impact enforcement has been a core function of the DOJ Civil Rights Division for more than five decades. Title VII, enacted in 1964, prohibits employment discrimination by entities that receive federal funds, and the Supreme Court's 1971 Griggs ruling confirmed that the law reaches facially neutral practices with discriminatory effects. Federal law-enforcement agencies receiving federal assistance — including local police departments and state agencies — have long been subject to this standard. By directing the dismissal of pending enforcement cases, Bondi used the AG's supervisory authority over the Civil Rights Division to withdraw the federal government from active litigation enforcing those statutory obligations, effectively suspending enforcement against a category of defendants for reasons the DOJ publicly tied to opposition to DEI programs rather than the legal merits of the underlying cases.