CLEVELAND, Ohio — The fight over whether a federal judge should keep supervising the Cleveland Division of Police moved up a level this week, after U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno filed a friend-of-the-court brief late on Tuesday, November 10, urging the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to vacate the ruling that keeps the city's 2015 police consent decree in place.

Source: Cleveland.com via Wisevoter

Moreno, a Republican who represents Ohio in the Senate and previously worked as a car dealership owner in the Cleveland area, argued that the decree has become too expensive for the city and that the district court has locked both parties — the City of Cleveland and the U.S. Department of Justice — into a settlement that neither side now wants, according to the reporting on his filing.

Both sides asked to end it. The judge said no.

The unusual feature of the case, United States v. City of Cleveland, is that there is no longer a dispute between the two parties who signed the decree. Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and the Justice Department formally asked the court in February to terminate the consent decree, saying its purposes had been achieved. U.S. District Judge Solomon Oliver, who oversees the decree, refused.

In refusing, Judge Oliver cited the city's completion of roughly 30 percent of the changes the decree requires — a figure the city and the Justice Department are now challenging on appeal. The Justice Department has appealed Oliver's denial to the 6th Circuit, and the district court appointed lawyer Lisa Blatt to defend Oliver's order in the appeals court, because the Justice Department itself is on the other side of the argument.

How Cleveland came under federal oversight

The consent decree was signed in 2015, under President Barack Obama's Justice Department and then-Mayor Frank Jackson, after a federal investigation found a pattern of civil-rights violations by Cleveland police, including regular use of excessive force. Consent decrees of this kind put a police department's training, supervision, use-of-force policies and accountability systems under a federal judge and a monitoring team until the court is satisfied the required reforms are complete and sustained.

Cleveland's decree became one of the best-known examples of that model nationally, and the current appeal is being watched beyond Ohio because its outcome could shape how easily other cities and future Justice Departments can exit similar agreements when both sides agree the work is done — and a judge disagrees.

A second brief makes the constitutional argument

Moreno's filing was not the only outside brief in the case. On November 6, the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), a nonprofit civil-rights litigation group, filed its own amicus brief asking the 6th Circuit to require the district court to terminate the decree, arguing that lengthy consent decrees of this kind are unlawful and violate constitutional principles.

Source: New Civil Liberties Alliance (GlobeNewswire)

In its announcement, the NCLA noted that under the decree's own terms only the parties — Cleveland or the Justice Department — may enforce it, and that the district court has not been called on to resolve any dispute between those parties, since both are asking for the same outcome. Caitlin M. Moyna, the group's senior litigation counsel, presented the filing as a challenge to what the group calls excessive consent decrees generally, not only Cleveland's.

What happens next

The appeal now moves on a set timetable. The city's arguments in the 6th Circuit are due in December, and Lisa Blatt is scheduled to file the arguments defending Judge Oliver's order in January. A decision would come after briefing and argument, and either side could then ask the U.S. Supreme Court to review the outcome.

Until the appeals court rules, the consent decree remains fully in force, and Cleveland police remain under federal supervision — more than a decade after the agreement was signed, and now over the stated objection of both the city that signed it and the federal government that negotiated it.