The U.S. Department of Justice has ended its civil-rights investigation into the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, setting off a tense back-and-forth between federal civil-rights officials and county leaders. Hennepin County officials blasted the inquiry as a political “stunt,” while the DOJ said the county updated charging guidance the department viewed as constitutionally suspect. The clash traces back to a 2025 policy that told prosecutors to consider racial disparities and included language about a defendant's "racial identity" in plea negotiations.
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Thursday that the Civil Rights Division was closing its review and posted a letter saying the office "appreciate[s] that HCAO now has corrected a policy that clearly violated the Constitution," punctuating her post with "So Much WINNING!!!" As reported by the Star Tribune, Hennepin County spokesman Daniel Borgertpoepping rejected that framing, calling the probe a "stunt" and arguing the department never had authority to investigate the county office in the first place.
Policy wording at issue
The policy at the center of the dispute, the "Negotiations Policy for Cases Involving Adult Defendants," originally told prosecutors to "consider the person charged as a whole person, including their racial identity." Critics said that wording could be misread as inviting race-based decisions. In response, the county circulated updated language that shifts the emphasis to detecting and eliminating bias and instructs prosecutors to "be aware of and actively seek to eliminate bias, including race-based bias, in their decision-making in each case." The change, along with a letter from outside counsel defending the revised approach, was laid out in detail by the Star Tribune.
DOJ opened the review last year
The Civil Rights Division opened a "pattern or practice" investigation in May 2025 to determine whether HCAO policies unlawfully considered race in prosecutorial decision-making. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the review was designed to examine policies and practices that might deprive people of rights protected by the Constitution or federal civil-rights laws.
Local fallout and context
Mary Moriarty’s reform agenda, including limits on prosecutions arising from low-level traffic stops and other shifts aimed at addressing racial disparities, has put the county office squarely in the middle of a broader fight over crime, race and prosecutorial discretion. Local reporting and public records show those policy moves prompted subpoenas and document requests and drew sustained criticism from mayors, police leaders and some state officials. As reported by MPR News, the department’s review followed intense public scrutiny over whether the reforms crossed constitutional lines.
Legal implications
Pattern-or-practice reviews are a core enforcement tool of the Civil Rights Division and can lead to negotiated remedies, consent agreements or litigation if investigators find systemic violations. Per the Justice Department, such reviews assess whether an office’s policies or practices deprive people of rights protected by federal law, the standard the department said it set out to test in this case. The sharply different public statements from federal and county officials suggest the dispute may keep surfacing in legal briefs and political talking points alike.
For now the federal review is closed, but the policy fight that sparked it is very much alive in Hennepin County political life. County attorneys say they will stand by their approach to addressing racial disparities, federal officials say they will enforce constitutional limits, and neither side appears ready to concede the argument in public or in court.
