A federal judge in Kentucky has rejected Louisville’s proposed agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice concerning police reforms. This decision follows the Justice Department’s earlier decision to retract its support for the reform plan.

In May, the Justice Department announced it was withdrawing from proposed consent decrees with both Louisville and Minneapolis. These agreements aimed to address police racial bias and misconduct following the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, which ignited widespread protests in 2020.

In his ruling on December 31, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Beaton emphasized that the responsibility for ensuring the Louisville Metro Police Department complies with federal law should rest with the city’s elected officials and the community they serve.

Previously, a judge in May dismissed a similar proposed consent decree for Minneapolis, which would have involved a federal officer overseeing the implementation of the reforms specified in the agreement.

Under President Joe Biden’s administration, the Justice Department conducted an extensive investigation into Louisville’s policing practices. Initiated after the fatal shooting of Taylor and the police’s handling of protests in 2020, the findings, released in early 2023, accused the Louisville Police Department of racial discrimination in law enforcement, excessive use of force, and conducting searches with invalid warrants.

New DOJ leadership accused the Biden Justice Department of using flawed legal theories to judge police departments and pursuing costly and burdensome consent decrees.

The consent decrees with Louisville and Minneapolis were approved by the Justice Department in the final weeks of the Biden administration, but the settlements had to be approved by a judge.

Beaton wrote that his ruling “doesn’t prevent the parties from undertaking the hard work of reform themselves.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg pledged to continue to pursue reform after the Justice Department’s withdrawal of support in May. The city created a local police reform plan and hired an independent law enforcement consulting group as monitor. Greenberg said some of the progress in 2025 included addressing a backlog of open records requests and making police shooting body camera videos public within 10 business days.

In a statement Friday, a spokesman for the mayor said Greenberg is “committed to ongoing reforms” and “did something no mayor in the country has done — he voluntarily created and implemented” Louisville’s own reform plan.

The city initiated some reforms after Taylor’s death in March 2020, including a city law banning the use of “no-knock” warrants. The warrants were typically used in surprise drug raids. The city also started a pilot program that sends behavioral health professionals to some 911 calls.

The city also paid a $12 million wrongful death settlement to Taylor’s family.

Earlier this year, former Louisville Police Detective Brett Hankison became the first officer involved in the Taylor raid to go to prison. A judge sentenced Hankison to nearly three years in prison on an excessive force conviction despite the Justice Department’s efforts to reduce his sentence to one day of time served.

Hankison shot 10 rounds after police were fired on by Taylor’s boyfriend from inside her apartment. Hankison shot blindly into Taylor’s windows but didn’t strike anyone inside or in a neighboring apartment.