The Trump administration has dismissed a series of DEI lawsuits brought by the Biden administration which claimed physical fitness tests had no bearing on someone’s ability to be a policeman or fireman. The Biden Justice Department insisted that written or physical tests were not “job related,” and even claimed that testing applicants is racist and sexist — because not enough women or minorities could pass them. One of Biden’s lawsuits branded the policies of then-Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s police force as discrimination.

The genius of the second Trump administration has been its ability to enact commonsense reforms exposing left-wing policies that are unhinged and unpopular, improve the core functions of government, restore power to the American people, and make liberals react in a way that makes them and their policies even more unhinged and unpopular.

Perhaps no case illustrates this trend than the disposing of four Biden-Harris lawsuits, which the White House said “lowered standards and endangered public safety” to promote left-wing ideology. “American communities deserve firefighters and police officers to be chosen for their skill and dedication to public safety — not to meet DEI quotas,” said Attorney General Pam Bondi as she dismissed the lawsuits last Wednesday. The Trump administration is “dedicated to ending illegal discrimination and restoring merit-based opportunity nationwide,” especially for “front-line public-safety workers who protect our nation,” because “[p]rioritizing DEI over merit when selecting firefighters and police officers jeopardizes public safety.”

Interestingly, one of the Biden-Harris administration’s lawsuits targeted policies overseen by a member of its own Cabinet.

Suing Pete Buttigieg’s South Bend

The Biden Justice Department filed a legal complaint that the South Bend police force required applicants to pass physical fitness and written aptitude tests since at least 2016. The mayor of South Bend from 2012 to 2020 was none other than Pete Buttigieg, the failed 2020 presidential hopeful and Transportation secretary who now presents himself as a born-again DEI opponent as he eyes a run for higher office in Michigan. “From 2016 through August 2019, approximately 87.6 percent of male test-takers passed the PFT, while approximately 45.5 percent of female test-takers passed,” stated the DOJ lawsuit. Around August 2019, the department “lowered the passing standards,” and something curious happened. “Since August 2019, approximately 83.8 percent of male test-takers passed the PFT, while approximately 47.4 percent of female test-takers passed.”

That is, the number of women who passed the less rigorous physical test rose by 2.9%. But is it plausible that fewer men could pass the test’s weaker criteria?

The new test outcomes prove that, if Mayor Pete’s police force engaged in job discrimination, it certainly did not disadvantage women. Yet the change did not satisfy the Biden administration, which sued to foist its views on South Bend once Buttigieg moved away and no longer had to face the electoral consequences.

Biden’s DOJ aimed a similar lawsuit at the Maryland Department of State Police, because the MDSP required applicants to pass a Functional Fitness Assessment Test (which has the unfortunate acronym “FFAT”). Applicants had to do 18 push-ups in one minute, 27 sit-ups in one minute, have the flexibility to sit down and stretch their fingers 1.5 inches past their toes, and run 1.5 miles in 15 minutes, 20 seconds. The majority of applicants passed: 81% of men and 51% of women. MDSP applicants also had to get at least a 70% on the written test, the Police Officer Selection Test (POST), in its three categories of reading, writing, and grammar. The DOJ reported that an even larger majority of applicants cleared this hurdle: 91% of whites and 71% of blacks passed the POST. Yet shortly after Republican Governor Larry Hogan left office, the Biden-Harris administration began negotiating a settlement with up-and-coming Democratic Governor Wes Moore (who happens to be black).

Employing White Firemen ‘Undermines Public Safety’: Biden Admin

The lawsuits were filed by the leader of Biden’s DOJ civil rights division, then-Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who holds an idiosyncratic view of public safety. “The under-representation of [b]lack people in the fire department workforce in Durham, and across the country, undermines public safety efforts,” said Clarke without proof.

Her words echoed the views of Los Angeles Fire Department Deputy Fire Chief Kristine Larson, who asserted (again, without proof) that a rescue worker who “looks like you” gives victims “a little bit more ease, knowing that somebody might understand their situation better.” The deputy chieftess dismissed concerns that she or others lack the sorts of qualifications South Bend and Maryland hoped to test. People frequently asked, “‘Is she strong enough to do this?’” Larson revealed. Some said, “‘You couldn’t carry my husband out of a fire.’ [To] which my response is, ‘He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire.’”

Indeed. That would be implicit in his being surrounded by flames. But if a woman lacks the muscle to fulfill her taxpayer-funded job duties to save human lives, she has gotten herself in the wrong place.

Clarke claimed any policy that disproportionately harms a minority group may ipso facto be considered racist. For instance, she sued the Durham (North Carolina) Fire Department, because the DFD’s written test “disqualified Black applicants from employment at significantly disproportionate rates.” Her DOJ claimed Title VII of the Civil Rights Act “prohibits not only intentional discrimination but also employment practices that result in a disparate impact on a protected group, unless such practices are job related and consistent with business necessity.” However, the Supreme Court largely invented the doctrine of “disparate impact” in its 1971 ruling in Griggs v. Duke Power Company. In the end, the term’s definition came from neither the legislative nor the judicial branch but from the unelected bureaucracy. “Agencies, not courts, first developed disparate impact under the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” noted Olatunde C.A. Johnson of Columbia Law School in a 2014 paper on the legal doctrine’s pedigree. He argued in favor of “the continuing role that federal administrative agencies play in shaping the meaning of disparate impact today.”

These are perfect lawsuits for social engineers whose radical commitment to imposing left-wing ideology exceeds everything, including human life. Clarke — for whom the Article III Project made a criminal referral after she allegedly committed perjury by misleading Congress about her history of domestic violence — also sued the state of Utah for refusing to house male inmates who identify as transgender in female prisons. Once again, Clarke justified the radical doctrine in identity politics wrapped in the guise of civil rights: Clarke called housing males in female prisons a “basic right [which] extends to those with gender dysphoria.”

The Biden administration’s Justice Department sued the state of Tennessee over its aggravated prostitution law (§ 39-13-516), which punishes with a Class C felony anyone who knowingly sells sex for money after testing positive for HIV/AIDS, on the grounds that state lawmakers “unlawfully discriminate against individuals with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), a disability.” Only a radical left-wing ideologue could treat a law designed to restrict the spread of the world’s deadliest virus as conservatives’ hard-hearted attempt to pick on cripples.

Of course, the Biden-Harris administration began promoting DEI radicalism in its first day in office via Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government.” That became the first of 78 Biden-era executive orders President Donald Trump repealed on day one.

The president’s disapproval has only caused the Left to double down on DEI. Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) insisted anyone trying “to eradicate DEI is saying, ‘We’re going to eradicate black and brown people and women and gay people and people with disabilities.’” (That may not be the most logical construction of the underlying sentence.) Another Minnesota Democrat, State Rep. Alicia “Liish” Kozlowski of Duluth (who identifies as non-binary) recently called a bill to prevent men from competing in women’s sports “another example of state-sanctioned bullying and genocide.” But while the Left insists ending DEI programs ranks a human rights atrocity somewhere between the Armenian Genocide and the Holodomor, Democrats censor anyone who complains about the impact of state-sponsored racism and sexism. “I am tired of the white tears,” said Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas). “The only people that are crying are the mediocre white boys that have been beaten out.”

The Left will soon have more to lament. “Today’s dismissal is an early step toward eradicating illegal DEI preferences across the government and in the private sector,” said Bondi. But Christians should rejoice.

Replacing Liberal Extremism with Constitutional Order and Biblical Morality

The Trump administration’s legal reversal restores one of the core functions of government. “God hath certainly appointed government to restrain the partiality and violence of men,” wrote John Locke in his Second Treatise on Government. The chief end of the law is “to protect and redress the innocent, by an unbiassed application of it, to all who are under it; wherever that is not bona fide done, war is made upon the sufferers, who having no appeal on earth to right them, they are left to the only remedy in such cases, an appeal to heaven,” added Locke, the philosopher most quoted by the Founding Fathers. “To avoid this state of war … is one great reason of men’s putting themselves into society.”

More importantly for Christians, halting lawsuits that put racial discrimination over public safety conforms to biblical morality. “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth Him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with Him,” said the Apostle Peter (Acts 10:34). The principle comes from the Old Testament, which repeatedly emphasizes that diverse measures — such as disparate physical fitness standards — constitute a form of fraud (Proverbs 20:10). “One law and one manner shall be for you, and for the stranger that sojourneth with you,” wrote Moses (Numbers 15:16 and 29; see also Leviticus 24:22, among other verses).

For generations, Christians have prayed, “We beseech thee also, so to direct and dispose the hearts of all Christian rulers, that they may truly and impartially administer justice, to the punishment of wickedness and vice, and to the maintenance of Thy true religion, and virtue.” President Trump’s banishment of state-sponsored racism brought their prayers one step closer to reality.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

---

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.