Labor & Employment Law Daily Wrap Up, DOJ NEWS—Consent decree remedying discrimination against Black, female firefighters and police officers vacated on Justice Department’s motion, (Aug 18, 2025)

By Brandi O. Brown, J.D.

The court-ordered consent decree requirements were referred to by the Attorney General as “DEI quotas.”

Last week, the Department of Justice announced that another consent decree set in place during the 1970s to remedy ongoing discrimination has fallen to a motion to end it filed by DOJ—the agency that sought the decree in the first place.

“Local communities must be able to choose firefighters and police officers based on skill and dedication to public safety—not to meet DEI quotas imposed by federal courts and the federal government,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “Thanks to this Department of Justice, the City of Norfolk’s first responder hiring will finally be free from federal micromanagement for the first time in almost 50 years.”

At the time the consent decree was entered, of the 627 police officers employed by the City of Norfolk, only 37 were Black (5.9 percent) and 22 were women (3.5 percent). In its fire department, 18 of the 432 firefighters were Black and none were women. As part of the decree, the city agreed to a goal of hiring black candidates for 20 percent of all entry-level positions of police officer and/or police cadet and 30 percent of all entry-level firefighter hires from 1978 to 1983. Regarding female candidates, it promised to hire women for 20 percent of all entry-level positions for police officer and/or police cadets.

Based on statistics reported by a local news channel in Norfolk, according to 2024 employment data, the percentage of Black entry-level employees in the police and fire departments is now at 19 percent and 15 percent, respectively, while female police officers and firefighters are now 10 percent and 11 percent of the total, respectively.

DOJ says the goals has been met. The Department of Justice, in its memorandum supporting its motion to dissolve the consent decree, contends that the City has met the decree’s goals and that dissolution is warranted under one of the two paths available under the consent decree—the path under which the city could move the court for dissolution “if the City has achieved a racial composition of sworn personnel in that department equal to 50% of that department’s interim goal.”

“Therefore,” the Justice Department contended, “under the Decree, the City could seek dissolution of the Decree as to the Police Department once its sworn entry-level workforce was 10% black (i.e., 1/2 of the 20% interim goal), and as to the Fire Department once the sworn entry-level workforce was 15% black (i.e., 1 /2 of the 30% interim goal).”

According to widely available data, however, the current percentage of white Norfolk residents and Black or African-American residents is much closer to being equal. White residents make up approximately 44 percent, and the current percentage of Black or African-American residents is just under 40 percent. Meanwhile, according to this publicly-available data, white employees make up over 61 percent of those employed by the police department (including all employees) and Black employees make up under 25 percent. In Fire-Rescue, just over 74 percent of employees are white, whereas approximately 15 percent are Black. With regard to gender, over 88 percent of fire-rescue employees are male and just over 11 percent are female, and in fire-rescue, 74 percent are male and nearly 26 percent are female.

Earlier in August, DOJ announced that a decades-old consent decree remedying discrimination against federal job applicants had likewise been terminated by motion to the federal court overseeing it.

News: LitigationNewsTrends AgencyNews Discrimination RaceDiscrimination SexDiscrimination PublicEmployees RemediesDamages