The Education Department is being praised by some for recently ending its disparate impact race-quota regulations, with an editorial in The Washington Post arguing civil rights laws “exists to protect individuals from discrimination, not to guarantee equal statistical outcomes.”
The department in late July removed disparate impact from Title VI regulations, meaning it will no longer treat neutral school policies or practices that produce unequal outcomes by race as violations of federal law.
“The approach has made schools across America less safe by deterring administrators and teachers from disciplining disruptive and violent students out of fear that they would be accused of racial discrimination,” the Post’s July 29 editorial stated.
“Some critics claim the Trump administration is blessing racial discrimination in schools. It’s the opposite. School discipline policies should aim to preserve a stable learning environment, not engineer racially balanced statistics,” the Post added.
Letters to the editor in early August agreed with the stance.
“Schools must be allowed to enforce discipline and preserve safe learning environments without the constant threat of federal punishment solely over statistical disparities in punishment. Failing to do so would impair the education of all students, especially those who would otherwise be forced to sit in classrooms where disruption and chaos drown out learning,” wrote Linda Chavez, chair of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
Hans Bader, who previously worked as an attorney in the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights, said disparate impact policies were on shaky legal ground to begin with.
“Those regulations were of questionable legality under the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval,” Bader wrote.
“There, the Supreme Court noted that the Title VI statute ‘permits the very behavior’ that disparate impact ‘regulations forbid.’ And the court added that it was strange to claim that such disparate impact regulations further the purpose of Title VI, which prohibits only ‘intentional discrimination.'”
