Call it the last stand of the confederacy: a Republican administration attempting to roll back decades of civil rights protections for American citizens. Before he left office, former Attorney General Bill Barr submitted a regulatory change to the White House that would narrow the department’s enforcement of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the provision that strips federal funding away from entities discriminating against people of color and other groups, including women, people with disabilities, and LGBTQ people. The rule change would mean the civil rights division would only enforce the cases where it could prove intentional discrimination, getting rid of the “disparate impact” rule.

That rule is based on the legal doctrine that a policy is discriminatory if it adversely impacts a group based on that group’s race, color, religion, sex, and, more expansively, sexual orientation. It’s been applied in education, housing, transportation, health care—essentially every facet of government policy by previous administrations, but especially expanded under former President Barack Obama. Trump has been chipping away at […]