Chicago – May 21, 2025
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it is dropping lawsuits against the police departments in Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis. These lawsuits were started during the Biden administration to investigate police misconduct.
Justice Department officials said the lawsuits were too big, cost too much money, and didn’t solve the problems they were meant to fix. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said the cases will be dismissed “with prejudice,” which means they cannot be filed again.
The DOJ also plans to end investigations into other police departments and is reviewing all current agreements, called consent decrees, that were made to improve police behavior. Officials said many of these agreements were based on weak legal ideas and didn’t use complete or accurate data.
In the Louisville and Minneapolis cases, the DOJ had claimed the police departments showed patterns of unfair treatment and unconstitutional practices. But now, officials say those claims were mostly based on statistics that were misunderstood or used incorrectly.
The Justice Department says it will continue to look at all open police reform cases to decide if they should be closed.
