Attorney General Pam Bondi ended federal lawsuits that the Biden administration had filed against local police and fire departments over their merit-based hiring policies.
Under the Biden administration, the DOJ’s Office of Civil Rights had sued local first responders for prioritizing merit in hiring rather than making decisions based on race, Just the News reported on Thursday.
“Despite no evidence of intentional discrimination – only statistical disparities – the prior administration branded the aptitude tests at issue in these cases as discriminatory in an effort to advance a DEI agenda,” the DOJ said in a news release.
“And it sought to coerce cities into conducting DEI-based hiring in response and spending millions of dollars in taxpayer funds for payouts to previous applicants who had scored lower on the tests, regardless of qualifications,” the news release added.
President Donald Trump signed executive orders ending Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies within the federal government, and Bondi’s decision this week marks the latest development in the ongoing effort to roll back DEI initiatives under the new administration.
Bondi’s office stated that DEI policies pose a threat to public safety and indicated that dismissing the cases represents an “an early step toward eradicating illegal DEI preferences across the government and in the private sector.”
“American communities deserve firefighters and police officers to be chosen for their skill and dedication to public safety – not to meet DEI quotas,” Bondi said.
The proposed consent decrees typically acknowledged that the departments used neutral selection criteria, such as credit checks, written exams, and physical fitness tests, to evaluate candidates for open positions. However, White men tended to achieve higher scores or perform better on these assessments, Fox News added.
For instance, a lawsuit filed in October against the City of Durham, North Carolina, alleged “unintentional” discrimination against Black applicants, citing that they failed to meet the required 70% passing score on the written exam at a lower rate than White candidates, resulting in fewer Black hires.
As a remedy, the complaint proposed eliminating the neutral written test and providing “back pay and/or preferential hiring” for Black candidates who were not selected due to their exam performance. The estimated cost of these measures was approximately $980,000 in monetary relief.
In a separate case filed against the Maryland State Police in October 2024, it was proposed that the agency discontinue its current selection methods, which included a written test requiring a score of 70% or higher and a physical assessment consisting of push-ups, sit-ups, a flexibility reach, a trigger pull, and a 1.5-mile run, Fox added.
“Because Black applicants passed the test less often than White applicants and because women passed the physical test less often than men, the Civil Rights Division concluded that Maryland was illegally discriminating against Black applicants and women,” a filing in the case said.
The proposed changes called for eliminating the previous selection criteria and allocating $2.75 million in monetary relief to Black candidates who were not hired due to written test results and women who were not hired due to physical test performance. The DOJ stated that similar lawsuits had also been filed against the cities of South Bend, Indiana, and Cobb County, Georgia, Fox noted further.
Also Thursday, Bondi shockingly revealed that the FBI’s New York field office was concealing crucial documents about Jeffrey Epstein.
In a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, Bondi asked for immediate compliance and an investigation into how the FBI handled the case from within the agency.
This comes after earlier reports that the FBI may have been destroying Epstein-related documents in secret, which led to more rumors about corruption in the government and attempts to obstruct justice.
Bondi, in her letter, said that her office had only received a small portion of the documents it had requested about Epstein’s criminal enterprise.
“I repeatedly questioned whether this was the full set of documents responsive to my request and was repeatedly assured by the FBI that we had received the full set of documents,” Bondi wrote. “Late yesterday, I learned from a source that the FBI Field Office in New York was in possession of thousands of pages of documents related to the investigation and indictment of Epstein.”
She then issued a direct order: “By 8:00 a.m. tomorrow, February 28, the FBI will deliver the full and complete Epstein files to my office, including all records, documents, audio and video recordings, and materials related to Jeffrey Epstein and his clients.”