Trump Rolls Back Disparate Impact
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"The Justice Department is removing the problematic doctrine from its regulations under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act."
https://www.city-journal.org/article/trump-disparate-impact-civil-rights-act-discrimination
Under disparate-impact doctrine, discrimination doesn’t have to be intentional to be illegal. Race-neutral policies that happen to affect some demographic groups more than others...are treated as presumptively illegal if challenged. In court, defendants must prove these [neutral] policies’ necessity...in lengthy, expensive, and risky proceedings.
Mentality of "But you don't have a single lesbian midget!" - and then company must go, Yes judge, since no lesbian midgets applied, so please don't kill us.
The civil rights laws passed in the 1960s said nothing about disparate impact, but the doctrine soon crept in...
the Department of Justice is now removing [it]...There’s little question that the executive branch has the authority to roll back regulations it made up in the first place.
[HOWEVER,] the rule change merely reinforces the administration’s policy of not pursuing disparate-impact enforcement, and a future administration can change it back.
truly rooting out disparate impact will involve more than just executive action. Ideally, Congress would rewrite the laws [to ban it permanently, since current laws can be twisted to allow it].