FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—The Department of Education is rescinding several disparate-impact regulations that justified racial quotas in school discipline, the Daily Signal can first report.
Disparate impact is an approach to civil rights enforcement that claims a neutral policy that does not discriminate on its face can constitute illegal racial discrimination if it has a “disproportionate” statistical effect among different racial and ethnic groups.
“We should be making decisions based on meritocracy,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey told the Daily Signal in an interview. “We should be making decisions based on on qualifications. This is just one additional important step, where we are demonstrating that any inclusion of race in any decision that is made within a school has to stop.”
The Obama administration used disparate-impact to require schools to make race a factor when considering disciplinary actions. Under Democrat administrations, the Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights found schools guilty of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for race-neutral policies if data showed the school disciplined more minority students.
Thursday’s deregulatory action aims to ensure equal education opportunities and treatment for students, according to the Education Department. The move is in line with President Donald Trump’s executive order last April titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” which made it the policy of the United States to eliminate all uses of disparate-impact liability.
The department’s current Title VI regulations are in tension with the statute and the Constitution, Richey said.
“What that has tended to do over the years is cause a lot of confusion and uncertainty in the enforcement of federal civil rights,” she said.
Richey said the department is now setting clear expectations by aligning its regulations with the statutory provisions of Title VI so schools know how Title VI will be enforced.
“When you tell schools that they are going to be held in violation of federal civil rights laws if their data doesn’t look good, if there’s any discrepancy in their data, schools are going to find a way to make the data look right,” Richey said.
She said disparate impact policies have caused schools to make discipline decisions based on race.
“The message that has been sent with the application of the disparate impact regulations, particularly in the discipline space, is that in order for you to stop discriminating, we’re going to make you discriminate more,” she said. “So what schools have done is start to take race into account on each of these decisions, where that’s exactly the opposite of what Title VI would require.”
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[ H/T The Daily Signal ]
