DCIST has reported that federal appellate judges have rejected the D.C. police union’s challenge of a law that gives the Metropolitan Police Department more power over police disciplinary processes. The law, originally passed in 2020, strips police discipline from collective bargaining processes and makes it easier for the department to fire police officers accused of misconduct or criminal activity.

In 2020, the D.C. Council passed police reform legislation that exempted police disciplinary policies from collective bargaining, meaning decisions about how officers should be disciplined would be decided solely by MPD management and the union would not be able to negotiate over them. The D.C. police union sued the city in response, arguing that the legislation “targets and discriminates against DC police officers” by denying them the same labor protections as other government employees. In its legal filings, the union argued that D.C.’s police reform laws were “designed to punish the police,” and came from a place of anti-police bias.

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