A federal judge cited Harmeet Dhillon’s Portland police posts in rejecting the Justice Department’s attempt to force the Portland Police Bureau to turn over records connected to protests outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility.
U.S. District Judge Michael Simon ruled that the DOJ had not shown the Portland bureau was violating a 2013 settlement with the federal government. That agreement concerned Portland officers’ use of force against people with actual or perceived mental illness during crises, according to the ruling. It did not concern political viewpoint discrimination or First Amendment protest policing.
The records fight followed the arrest of conservative social media personality Nick Sortor by Portland police after an altercation with anti-ICE protesters. The DOJ said it was investigating whether Portland police punished people for particular political views and demanded thousands of documents from the bureau, relying on the older civil rights settlement as its hook.
Why did the judge reject the DOJ's Portland police demand?
Simon said the government’s theory did not fit the case it invoked. In the judge’s description, the 2013 case was about excessive or unnecessary police force against people in mental health crisis, along with Portland’s policies, training, supervision and accountability for those encounters.
The judge wrote that the case had not been about viewpoint discrimination or First Amendment issues. He also said the United States had offered no evidence that Portland police were failing to comply with the settlement terms.
Simon found three signs that the government came to court with “unclean hands,” a legal doctrine that can block a party from getting equitable relief when its own conduct is tied to bad faith or improper purpose. In plainer English: a court may refuse to help a litigant use judicial power when the litigant’s own conduct makes the request look dirty.
One sign was timing. The judge noted that the DOJ’s move came after Oregon and Portland sued the federal government over its attempt to take control of Oregon National Guard units.
Another was Dhillon’s public messaging. On Oct. 3, 2025, the same day Judge Karin Immergut was hearing Oregon and Portland’s request for a temporary restraining order, Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, reposted Sortor’s claim that Attorney General Pam Bondi had ordered a full investigation of the Portland Police Bureau after his arrest.
Dhillon added: “Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.” Simon wrote that the statement was not the language or tone of a good-faith DOJ investigation. He said it carried the “hallmarks of a threat and attempted intimidation.”
The ruling also pointed to another post by Dhillon. In a footnote, Simon said Dhillon reposted a comment saying, in part, “Judge Immergut must be impeached,” after Immergut issued a temporary restraining order relying partly on testimony from two senior Portland police officials. Simon described that as threatening conduct by Dhillon.
The decision leaves the DOJ without the document production it sought through the 2013 settlement, at least on this record. The ruling does not resolve every dispute over Portland’s protest policing, but it sharply limits the government’s attempt to use an old excessive-force agreement as a shortcut for a new political-speech investigation.
This story draws on original reporting from Techdirt.
