Education Department Scraps 'Disparate Impact' Rule, Ending a Decades-Old Test for School Discrimination

The U.S. Education Department will no longer treat school policies that disproportionately harm one group of students as discriminatory unless the discrimination was intentional, rescinding a standard that has anchored federal civil rights enforcement in schools for decades.

In a rule change announced Thursday and published in the Federal Register, the department removed a series of "disparate impact" provisions from its regulations implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in any program receiving federal funds. The rule took effect immediately, without the department first seeking public comment — an unusual step for a regulatory change of this magnitude.

In schools, the disparate impact standard has been applied most visibly to discipline. Federal data has consistently shown that Black students are more likely to receive punishments that pull them out of the classroom — suspensions, expulsions and transfers to alternative schools — than their white classmates facing similar infractions. Racial justice advocates spent years pressing districts to close those gaps; the Trump administration has spent the past year pressing in the opposite direction. An executive order last year directed the Education Department to issue new school discipline guidance and called for a review of organizations that had promoted policies aimed at reducing discipline disparities.

The department argued in a written statement that the old standard had forced schools and universities into racial balancing out of fear of federal enforcement. "With these changes, schools will be empowered to address classroom issues without fearing the federal government will weaponize antidiscrimination laws," said Kimberly Richey, assistant secretary for civil rights.

Civil rights groups condemned the rescission. In a letter signed by 60 civil rights and educational advocacy organizations, the groups stressed that discrimination is often not explicit and that courts have recognized the disparate impact framework for decades. "Today's action has no basis in law or morality and is further evidence that this administration is determined to undermine our laws, abandon civil rights enforcement, and deny the existence of systemic discrimination," they wrote.

Michael Pillera, director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said the change strips out a critical guardrail. If districts know the Education Department will not investigate or enforce against a policy with a discriminatory effect, he said, they are more likely to keep the policy in place. "The concept is you can't create an unjust and unnecessary barrier that excludes folks on the basis of race," Pillera said. "It has essentially the same impact as if you were doing it explicitly. That is what this is meant to stop."

The move fits a governmentwide retreat from the standard. A White House executive order signed last April directed federal agencies to stop relying on disparate impact analysis when enforcing anti-discrimination laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Justice Department and the Department of Energy all rescinded their disparate impact guidance last year, and in May fair housing groups sued the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over parallel changes they said would reverse decades of lending-discrimination enforcement.