New Act Restores Police Collective Bargaining on Discipline and Rewinds the Clock on Lawsuit Deadlines in D.C.

The “Protecting Our Nation’s Capital Emergency Act” is a short, sharp piece of legislation focused entirely on rolling back specific police accountability measures enacted in the District of Columbia just a couple of years ago. Essentially, this bill targets two major areas of the D.C. Comprehensive Policing and Justice Reform Amendment Act of 2022 and undoes them, restoring the legal landscape to what it was before.

Who Gets to Negotiate Discipline?

The first major change deals with labor relations and police discipline. The bill specifically strikes down a section of the D.C. Government Comprehensive Merit Personnel Act of 1978 that prevented law enforcement officers from using collective bargaining to negotiate the terms of their own discipline. By removing this restriction, the bill hands back significant power to police unions. This means that if an officer faces potential disciplinary action—say, for a violation of department policy—the procedures, timelines, and even the consequences of that discipline can now be negotiated between the union and the city government. For the average D.C. resident, this is a big deal because it could make it harder for the city to enforce new, tougher accountability standards unilaterally; everything now has to go through the bargaining table.

Hitting Rewind on Lawsuit Deadlines

The second part of the bill wipes out an entire subtitle of the 2022 reform act. That subtitle had previously set new, specific time limits—the statute of limitations—for filing lawsuits against members or civilian employees of the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). When the new act repeals that subtitle, it automatically reinstates the original statute of limitations for those claims. If you’re a busy professional in D.C. who might need to file a claim against the MPD, this change affects your timeline. While the specific length of the original limit isn't stated in this bill, the effect is clear: the shorter, newer deadlines for accountability lawsuits are gone, and whatever the previous, likely longer, time frame was is now back in place. For those seeking recourse against alleged police misconduct, this change dictates how much time they have to gather evidence and file their case.

The Real-World Tradeoff

This legislation creates a clear trade-off. On one side, D.C. law enforcement personnel and their unions regain significant negotiation power over their employment conditions, which is a clear benefit to them. On the other side, the mechanisms put in place in 2022 to potentially streamline police accountability are being dismantled. For D.C. government leaders trying to implement reforms, having to negotiate every disciplinary rule can be a major hurdle. For the public, the key takeaway is that the systems designed to hold police accountable—both through departmental discipline and through civil lawsuits—are now shifting back toward a framework that grants more protection and negotiation leverage to the officers involved.