Federal prosecutors filed a motion on Friday, March 20, asking a federal judge to dismiss all remaining criminal charges against two former Louisville Metro Police Department officers accused of providing false information on the no-knock warrant used in the March 2020 raid that led to the death of Breonna Taylor, a 26-year-old Black EMT who was shot by officers in her apartment. The Trump Justice Department asked that the charges against former LMPD detective Joshua Jaynes and former Sgt. Kyle Meany be dismissed "in the interest of justice," with prejudice — meaning they could not be refiled. A hearing is scheduled for April 3. CNN reported the motion under the headline "DOJ seeks to dismiss charges against two officers in Breonna Taylor raid," and CBS News confirmed the motion, noting that the charges would be dismissed with prejudice.

Joshua Jaynes and Kyle Meany were federally charged in 2022 under the Biden administration for allegedly submitting false information on the affidavit supporting the search warrant for Taylor's apartment. Federal judges had twice reduced a felony charge against each officer to a misdemeanor, finding insufficient direct causal link between the false information in the warrant and Taylor's death. The motion to dismiss follows the DOJ's earlier January 2026 decision to drop the consent decree reforms with the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments. Police1.com, an outlet that covers law enforcement, reported the DOJ's motion and noted that the decision tracks with the administration's broader posture of reducing federal oversight of local law enforcement and dismissing charges it views as politically motivated.

Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, responded sharply on Facebook: "I am extremely disappointed in Trump's Justice Department. Getting a phone notification about the charges being dropped is utterly disrespectful." NAACP President Derrick Johnson issued a statement: "We are sickened. Once again, Trump's Justice Department is trampling over our civil rights and leaving impacted communities out in the cold." ABC News confirmed Palmer's statement and the NAACP response. The motion comes as the six-year anniversary of Taylor's death approaches; a U.S. News & World Report timeline published March 20 traced the full arc of the case, from the March 13, 2020 shooting to the federal indictments and now the dismissal motion.

Conservative commentators and law enforcement advocacy organizations, cited by Police1.com and Fox News affiliates, argued that the DOJ's decision reflects a correct legal assessment: that federal civil rights charges built on a falsified-warrant theory were legally tenuous given judges' repeated decisions to downgrade the charges, and that the federal government should not use criminal prosecution as a tool for political pressure. The Taylor case had been a flashpoint in the national debate over policing and racial justice since 2020 and was among the cases cited by the Biden DOJ in its consent decree negotiations with Louisville. The dismissal of federal charges leaves no remaining criminal proceedings related to Taylor's death in federal court, though the city of Louisville paid her family a million settlement in 2020.