The Department of Justice (DOJ) has dismissed Biden-era consent decrees in North Carolina, Georgia, Maryland, and Indiana that sought to impose diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring requirements on their fire and police departments.
DOJ chief of staff Chad Mizelle announced the move in a series of social media posts, citing the Trump administration’s commitment to prioritizing merit-based hiring over race-based preferences.
Consent decrees are legally binding agreements that settle legal disputes without admitting liability, often used to enforce policy changes in government agencies and institutions. Mizelle said that their introduction “sought to penalize fire and police departments for using race-neutral hiring tools.”
Mizelle explained that the Biden administration justified the need for the consent decrees as it faced lawsuits against certain officer hiring assessments. The assessments in question included written tests requiring only a 70 percent passing score, covering basic skills such as reading comprehension and report writing.
“There was NO evidence that the departments engaged in intentional discrimination,” Mizelle wrote on social media platform X.
“Despite a total lack of evidence of intentional discrimination, these cases accused departments of discrimination solely based on statistical disparities rather than actual discriminatory intent. The Biden-era DOJ sought to force these departments to adopt DEI-based hiring practices, provide financial payouts to unsuccessful minority applicants, and abandon merit-based recruitment.”
experience. In that case, the consent decree settled a lawsuit brought by the Biden-era DOJ alleging that the state’s written and physical fitness tests had the effect of disqualifying black and female candidates at significantly disproportionate rates.
Mizelle said all the dismissed cases were inconsistent with President Donald Trump’s and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s efforts to end illegal DEI preferences and to restore merit-based hiring practices.
