Imbalances will no longer be corrected. This should be good.
Federal regulators and lobbyists familiar with the change say the White House management and budget office is reviewing a proposed executive order, originally drafted by two conservative Washington think tanks, that would prohibit the use of “the disparate-impact approach in the enforcement or application of any civil-rights law.”
A catalyst for the move is White House budget director Mick Mulvaney, who is currently also serving as interim White House chief of staff and who, while serving in Congress, was a longtime critic of disparate impact. It is not clear whether President Trump has decided to issue the executive order, which would repudiate the underlying rationale for scores of regulations and thousands of government lawsuits alleging racial discrimination, resulting in billions of dollars in fines. Doing away with it would engender fierce opposition from Democrats.
The White House press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Championed by liberals and civil-rights activists, and aggressively enforced by the Obama administration, disparate-impact doctrine holds that policies or practices that are set forth and applied neutrally can be discriminatory if they have an unequal impact on specific groups. Aimed at rooting out subtle forms of bias, the theory asserts that statistical disparities can be proof of discrimination even when no intention is clear.
Although the Supreme Court first approved use of the approach in 1971 and reaffirmed its use most recently in 2015, conservative opponents of the doctrine believe the currently constituted high court would uphold an executive order doing away with it.
The Obama administration used disparate impact to sue hundreds of school districts for civil rights violations because they disciplined black students at higher rates than whites. It also used the theory to allege bias in consumer credit reporting, employee background checks, student loans, criminal court fines, traffic stops and arrests, and home and auto lending, among other things.
Conservative critics argue liberal politicians and bureaucrats have long misused the theory to find racial bias where it does not exist. They see it as a social-engineering weapon aimed at equalizing outcomes and extending the government’s power over the private sector.
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[–] 16966947? ago
While this is one of the good things Trump is doing, why did he wait 2 years? This has nothing to do with getting Congressional approval, it should have been implemented in the first few days.