WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has issued a condemnation of a series of recent executive orders from President Trump, calling them a coordinated effort to roll back decades of civil rights protections. In a statement released this week, the organization accused the Trump administration of “weaponizing the law against the very communities it was designed to protect,” by distorting the legal doctrine of disparate impact across sectors including housing, employment, education, and lending.
“These orders aim to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country—to erode guardrails preventing discrimination in housing, lending, employment, education, healthcare, and other areas of life,” said Dariely Rodriguez, acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers’ Committee. “They will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color.”
Central to the Committee’s concerns is the order entitled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” which, the group says, wrongfully asserts that disparate impact liability is unlawful. The order directs federal agencies to repeal all Title VI regulations that permit claims based on disparate impact, assess and deprioritize investigations and lawsuits currently relying on the doctrine, and instructs the Department of Justice to target state laws and regulations that operate under disparate impact standards.
Disparate impact liability, first recognized by the Supreme Court in 1971, is a legal framework that allows individuals to challenge policies that appear neutral but disproportionately harm certain groups. The Committee emphasized that this doctrine has been upheld repeatedly and serves as an essential civil rights tool, ensuring that individuals harmed by structural discrimination can seek redress even in the absence of explicit discriminatory intent.
Legal experts at the Lawyers’ Committee criticized the administration’s assertion that civil rights laws must show direct discriminatory intent to be valid. Katy Youker, director of the Economic Justice Project, said that without disparate impact liability, employers could legally discriminate by denying jobs to applicants of color based on arrest records, paying women less without justification, or firing older workers for arbitrary reasons. “These orders do not change the law,” she stated, “but they do expose a vision for America that predates the Civil Rights Movement.”
In housing, the Committee warned that the orders would weaken protections against exclusionary zoning and race-neutral policies that result in residential segregation. Brook Hill, senior counsel for the Fair Housing and Community Development Project, noted that disparate impact has been critical in challenging housing practices that “deny Black people and other people of color the choice to live in communities where they are underrepresented or displace them from the communities they’ve called home for generations.”
In education, the Lawyers’ Committee raised alarms about the order entitled “Reinstating Common Sense School Discipline Policies,” which they argue supports racially biased disciplinary practices. Michael Pillera, director of the Educational Opportunities Project, pointed to a long record of disparate impact enforcement in school discipline, special education placement, and access to academic resources. He cited a 2016 Department of Education finding that one school district disciplined Black students for tardiness and truancy at a rate nearly seven times higher than white students in similar circumstances.
The Committee also referenced a September 2024 Government Accountability Office report and the Department of Education’s most recent Civil Rights Data Collection, which found that Black students are disproportionately referred to law enforcement and subjected to suspensions and expulsions. “The order affirmatively embraces discrimination,” Pillera said, “allowing unequal and unwarranted discipline for Black students and other students of color.”
Another order, “Advancing Artificial Intelligence Education for American Youth,” directs the integration of AI into K–12 education without civil rights safeguards. The Committee warned that, without proper guardrails, this could magnify existing inequities. In November 2024, the Department of Education issued guidance affirming that civil rights laws apply to discrimination caused by AI systems. The new order, Pillera argued, “flouts that reality and sets the stage for more rampant discrimination in classrooms across the country.”
The Lawyers’ Committee also denounced “Reforming Accreditation to Strengthen Higher Education,” which they say misrepresents the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard to argue that diversity, equity, and inclusion standards in accreditation are unlawful. The order threatens to revoke recognition for accrediting bodies that promote diversity, effectively targeting colleges and universities that prioritize inclusive practices.
Shatorah Roberson, senior policy counsel at the Committee, warned that the order amounts to an attempt to “pressure universities into promoting the administration’s approved ideology under the vague banner of ‘intellectual diversity.’” She described it as a deliberate strategy to undermine institutional independence and stifle inclusive enrollment and faculty hiring.
In its closing statement, the Lawyers’ Committee pledged to continue challenging these orders both in court and in the public sphere. “We stand ready to fight the aims of these orders inside and outside the courts to ensure that Black people and other people of color have the voice, opportunity, and power to make the promises of our democracy real.”
