U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) walks though the Capitol in Washington, DC. (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
In a letter, Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno urged new U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to review and likely rescind consent decrees around the country. The agreements between federal agencies and local ones lay out a court-enforced plan for some kind of corrective action — Akron for instance, agreed to a decree in 2014 related to its water systems.
But the sort of agreements Moreno is focused on have to do with federal oversight of police agencies.
“Law enforcement officers need to be able to do their jobs and enforce the law without politicians holding them back,” Moreno said in a press release. “That’s why I’m urging Attorney General Bondi to finally reexamine consent decree policies like we’ve seen in Cleveland, to help restore public safety.”
Taking steps to rescind police consent decrees was one of the planks of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 plan. Similarly, the America First Policy Institute, where Bondi headed up the legal team, included opposition of consent decrees in its policy agenda.
The state of consent decrees
According to the criminal justice reform group Vera there are almost 30 active consent decrees between federal agencies and police or corrections agencies around the country. The Cleveland consent decree has been in place since 2015, demanding the department alter use of force policies and improve training for officers, among other changes. As of the federal monitor’s report filed in late 2023, Cleveland was still noncompliant on several fronts.
Although Moreno complains in his letter about the duration of that agreement, there have been others that have lasted longer including in Los Angeles, Detroit, and Oakland.
Consent decrees operate like many other federal court cases that result in a settlement. Moreno’s letter argues, in effect, that prior administrations didn’t fully close out those settlements and so Bondi’s Justice Department can scrap the consent decrees by simply filing with the court to voluntarily dismiss the case.
His letter calls on Bondi’s office to review the federal docket and let him know of any cities in that situation. Moreno adds that he wants her office to formally report its position on voluntary dismissal and pass along any policy documents related to that decision.
Can they do that?
Robert Gresham, a civil rights attorney with the Cochran law firm in Cleveland, explained that the U.S. Department of Justice is typically the party in charge of enforcing a consent decree. Because of that, he acknowledged there’s little to stop federal officials from declining to enforce existing consent decrees.
“Candidly, if I’m being honest, it’s as simple as the Department of Justice deciding not to enforce those,” he said.
To Gresham, it looks like Moreno is trying to direct Bondi to a legal backdoor allowing her to invalidate decrees once and for all, not by determining that departments have met the agreed upon demands, but by asserting the paperwork wasn’t properly filed.
“They’ve found a technicality, in my estimation,” he said, “that would allow them to hide behind the procedural issues.”
Gresham argued that attorneys, like police, are part of a profession that relies on the public’s trust. In both cases, an individual’s ethical lapse undermines the reputation of the profession as a whole, and he worries about the Trump administration pulling the plug on accountability efforts.
“It certainly sends a message that this administration is squarely and blindly behind law enforcement regardless of what their conduct is,” Gresham added.
Capital University Law Professor Mark Brown echoed those concerns, and argued that a blanket rollback of consent decrees would make the Department of Justice look like a “purely political actor.”
“Frankly, the Department of Justice quite often will change positions with the change of administrations. That happens. But to do it wholesale sends a terrible message, I think, to the American people, and it really does crimp their credibility.”
Although Brown agreed there’s little to stop DOJ officials from simply declining to enforce the decrees, he argued that scrapping them might not be as simple as Moreno claims. He noted that third parties — like prisoners in the case of a corrections consent decree — could petition to enforce changes.
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