Judge lets protesters pursue claims that D.C. police routinely keep seized phones for months

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — A federal judge on Wednesday allowed two lawsuits to go forward against the District of Columbia over claims that its police department routinely holds on to cell phones seized at arrests for months or years after any investigative need has ended, including from people who were never charged with a crime.

U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in a 10-page memorandum opinion that the plaintiffs, who were arrested during racial-justice protests in August 2020, had plausibly alleged that the Metropolitan Police Department has a “persistent and widespread” custom of “seizing and unreasonably withholding phones.” That is enough, he wrote, to keep their Fourth Amendment claims against the city alive. The ruling is not a finding that the District did what the plaintiffs say; it means the cases move toward discovery and, potentially, trial.

The decision covers two related cases: Cameron v. District of Columbia, No. 21-cv-2908, and Asinor v. District of Columbia, No. 21-cv-2158. Judge Mehta denied the District’s motion to dismiss in Cameron entirely and granted it only in part in Asinor.

Five years, two rulings

The plaintiffs in Cameron say they were among about 40 people arrested at a protest on Aug. 13, 2020, according to a 2024 appeals court opinion in the case. Police seized their phones; none was charged, and some waited months to get their devices back while others never did, Judge Mehta wrote, summarizing the complaint. Oyoma Asinor, the lead plaintiff in the second case, was arrested at a protest on Aug. 30, 2020, and was never charged, but it took him more than a year to recover his phone, the opinion says.

Judge Mehta first dismissed both cases in August 2022, concluding the plaintiffs had not stated a Fourth Amendment violation. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed in August 2024. Writing for the panel, Judge Gregory Katsas framed the question as whether the Fourth Amendment requires that the continued retention of property seized at an arrest, even after the arrested person is released, “must also be reasonable.” The court held that it does.

That sent the cases back to Judge Mehta on a narrower question: whether the city itself, rather than individual officers, can be held liable. Under the Supreme Court’s 1978 decision in Monell v. Department of Social Services, a municipality is liable under the federal civil rights law only if its own policy or custom caused the violation. The District argued that the plaintiffs’ examples were “too few, vague, incredible, and too factually dissimilar” to show a custom, the judge wrote. He declined “to peel apart each of these examples.”

The examples the judge credited

Taken together, Judge Mehta wrote, the plaintiffs’ allegations were enough. They include their own experiences in 2020; the seizure of phones from more than 200 people arrested downtown during protests at the January 2017 presidential inauguration, which the complaint says were not returned for at least eight months; examples supplied by criminal defense lawyers whose clients’ phones were held for between four months and four years; a 2019 report by the District’s Police Complaints Board “outlin[ing] MPD’s failures to return property”; and a 2016 article in The Atlantic.

The judge kept Mr. Asinor’s claim that the District converted his property, a D.C. law claim tied to the phone. But he dismissed, for lack of jurisdiction, Mr. Asinor’s separate claims of negligence, assault and battery and violation of the District’s First Amendment Assemblies Act arising from police use of chemical irritants and stun grenades at a protest on Aug. 29, 2020. Those claims involved “different conduct that occurred on different days,” he wrote, so they did not belong in the same federal case. The ruling does not decide them on the merits.

Why it matters

Police seize phones at arrests every day, and how long they may keep them is a live question in a city where, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro said Wednesday, the federal-local task force has made more than 18,000 arrests. The D.C. Circuit’s 2024 decision set the rule for the courts in Washington: once the government no longer has a legitimate reason to keep property, continuing to hold it can be an unreasonable seizure. Wednesday’s ruling lets the plaintiffs try to prove that the District’s practice, not just a few officers’ mistakes, violated that rule.

The plaintiffs are represented by the ACLU of the District of Columbia, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, the firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and lawyer Jeffrey L. Light, according to court dockets. The Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia represents the city.

Asked for comment

Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said: “The court’s decision is a win for accountability and our Fourth Amendment rights. The D.C. police cannot escape accountability for regularly failing to return people’s property, as required by law. Our case continues, and we’re one step closer to making sure government agents can’t simply hold on to people’s property for no good reason.”

The Office of Police Complaints said the 2019 report, titled “Handling Property,” made four recommendations. In an implementation update published in February 2021, two were considered partially implemented and two were not implemented, said Nykisha Cleveland, a public affairs specialist for the office. The office continues to receive complaints about the alleged mishandling of personal property: 90 allegations in fiscal 2025, compared with 72 in fiscal 2024, according to its fiscal 2025 annual report.

The Washington Inquisitor on Thursday asked the Metropolitan Police Department, the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, the ACLU of the District of Columbia, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee, Mr. Light, the D.C. Office of Police Complaints and DC Justice Lab about the ruling and about MPD’s current rules for returning phones seized from people who are not charged. The ACLU of the District of Columbia and the Office of Police Complaints responded; their comments are included above. This story will be updated with any other responses.

Update, Oct. 22, 2026: This story has been updated with comment from the ACLU of the District of Columbia and information from the D.C. Office of Police Complaints.

Photo: The E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse in Washington. G. Edward Johnson via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0.