Biden DOJ Sues Police Department For Not Making Its Application Process Easy Enough For Women, Minorities

The Biden-Harris administration is accusing another jurisdiction of discriminating against women and African Americans by creating law enforcement examinations that are too hard for them.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) on Friday announced a lawsuit against South Bend, Indiana. In their court filing, the DOJ accused the South Bend Police Department of creating a physical fitness test that discriminates against female candidates and a written test that discriminates against African-American candidates, allegedly because both groups were passing at considerably lower rates than their male and white counterparts, respectively.

“Equal employment opportunity is critical to ensuring that law enforcement agencies do not unfairly exclude otherwise eligible job applicants based on discriminatory practices,” assistant attorney general Kristen Clarke of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said in a statement. “Discriminatory barriers that deny qualified Black and female applicants the opportunity to be police officers violate civil rights and undermine public safety efforts.”

“The Justice Department is committed to equal access to employment opportunities in the policing sector so that all qualified applicants have a fair chance to protect and serve their communities,” Clarke continued.

Since at least 2016, the South Bend Police Department (SBPD) has used a physical fitness test to screen candidates that consists of six activities, including a vertical jump, sit-ups, 300-meter run, push-ups, 1.5-mile run, and a pistol trigger pull, according to the lawsuit. From 2016 through August 2019, roughly 87.6% of male applicants passed the physical test while roughly 45.5% of female applicants passed.

The DOJ noted in their lawsuit that the SBPD lowered their physical fitness requirements around August 2019, but women continued to fail at a considerably lower rate than their male counterparts.