Free Republic

Federal authorities moved Friday to drop a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Sheetz convenience store chain, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to halt the use of a key tool for enforcing the country’s civil rights laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the top federal agency for enforcing workers rights, filed a motion in a Pennsylvania federal court to dismiss the Sheetz lawsuit, citing Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to deprioritize the use of “disparate impact liability” in civil rights enforcement. Disparate impact liability holds that policies that are neutral on their face can violate...

For decades, the federal government has used data analysis to ferret out race and sex discrimination, winning court cases and reaching settlements in housing, education, policing and across American life. Now the Trump administration is working to unwind those same cases.In recent weeks, the Justice Department backed out of an agreement with an Atlanta bank accused of systematically discouraging Black and Latino home buyers from applying for loans. The Education Department terminated an agreement with a South Dakota school district where Native American students were disciplined at higher rates than their White peers. And federal prosecutors have dropped several racial...

Measured in Trump time, it took them eons to get around to it, but the White House has finally taken the most important step it can to restore meritocracy to American society: eliminating disparate-impact theory from civil rights analysis and enforcement. Disparate-impact theory holds that if a neutral, colorblind standard of achievement or behavior has a disproportionately negative effect on underrepresented minorities (overwhelmingly, on blacks), it violates civil rights laws. It has been used to invalidate literacy and numeracy standards for police officers and firemen, cognitive skills and basic knowledge tests for teachers, the use of SATs in college admissions,...

The professional conservative movement should be moving massive amounts of money to support parents' efforts and harden them as a target of this leftist onslaught.For the first time in ages, the political right has had a massive boon dropped right into its lap. Democrats are shaking in their boots over the political implications of their institutional support for the state-sponsored racism known as critical race theory.Their initial attempts to Jedi mind trick away people’s concern by insisting CRT isn’t real failed, and even Nancy Pelosi mouthpiece Politico is reporting how CRT in schools is deeply offending the independent and Democrat...

Just look at the issues the Democrats are pushing: defunding the police, which hurts mostly poor and working-class neighborhoods; critical race theory, which mostly interests woke white activists (and rich-and-guilty Dem donors) but which actually sends a message of inferiority to minority youths; gender ideology, which plays less well among the more traditional and more religious working-class minorities; environmental policies that produce higher gas prices and lower employment, while pushing food prices up; open borders that drive down wages for downscale workers; and so on. Donors and activists love this stuff. They live in neighborhoods that are mostly insulated from...

Despite the implications of effectively banning higher percentages of black people from their premises, many major employers, especially universities, have mandated COVID vaccination.While 46 percent of white Americans have received at least one COVID vaccine shot by now, only 33 percent of black Americans have done the same, according to the federal data available as of June 21 and analyzed most recently by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). This means that, under the “disparate impact” standard now used to convict a workplace of racial discrimination under federal regulations and to accuse the United States of “systemic racism,” any use of...

In what would be one of the Trump administration’s most far-reaching moves regarding race relations, top White House officials are planning a sharp pullback from federal efforts to correct imbalances in outcomes for minorities in everything from housing to hiring. On the table: a ban on the use of a controversial numbers-focused racial-bias theory known as “disparate impact.” Federal regulators and lobbyists familiar with the change say the White House management and budget office is reviewing a proposed executive order, originally drafted by two conservative Washington think tanks, that would prohibit the use of “the disparate-impact approach in the enforcement...

The Trump administration is considering a far-reaching rollback of civil rights law that would dilute federal rules against discrimination in education, housing and other aspects of American life, people familiar with the discussions said. A recent internal Justice Department memo directed senior civil rights officials to examine how decades-old “disparate impact” regulations might be changed or removed in their areas of expertise, and what the impact might be, according to people familiar with the matter. Similar action is being considered at the Education Department and is underway at the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Last month, the Senate voted to confirm Kenneth L. Marcus as assistant secretary for civil rights in the Department of Education. The vote was 50-46, with not one Democrat supporting him—a point I will return to presently. In that position, he will head up the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). This is the second time Marcus has held the post since he was “delegated the authority” to run OCR during the administration of George W. Bush. During his career, Marcus, a University of California-trained lawyer, has also served as staff director of the United States Commission on Civil Rights...

School shootings, affirmative action, disparate impact, the school to prison pipeline, mortgage defaults, Barack Obama, and Trayvon Martin Nikolas Cruz is the scumbag who murdered 17 people at Stoneman Douglas High School earlier this month. The school is part of the Broward County school district in Florida. In September 2017, Cruz made a comment at YouTube, under his real name, which said:“I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”The operator of the YouTube channel told YouTube and the FBI about this comment. Even though the government can use IP addresses to find anyone, the FBI never arrested or even questioned Cruz....

DENVER (CBS4)– Federal authorities told the Colorado Department of Transportation and opponents of the planned Interstate 70 expansion this week that it would open an investigation into claims the project violates the Civil Rights Act.The pending investigation comes in response to a federal complaint filed with the U.S Department of Transportation by Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, and neighborhood groups impacted by the project, including the Cross Community Coalition, Colorado Latino Forum and Elyria-Swansea Neighborhood Association. Filed last month, the complaint alleges CDOT’s plan will result in “disparate and severe environmental and economic impacts” on the predominantly Latino communities.Candi CdeBaca,...

It is amazing how many different ways the same thing can be said, creating totally different impressions. For example, when President Barack Obama says that defeating ISIS is going to take a long time, how is that different from saying that he is going to do very little, very slowly? It is saying the same thing in different words. Defenders of the administration's policies may cite how many aerial sorties have been flown by American planes against ISIS. There have been thousands of these sorties, which sounds very impressive. But what is less impressive -- and more indicative -- is...

Civil Rights: The Supreme Court has given the White House license to water down, if not destroy, virtually every standard dealing with housing. There's nothing stopping its push for affirmative-action lending and zoning. In a shocking 5-4 decision, the high bench ruled that housing- and lending-discrimination lawsuits based on no proof other than statistics showing different outcomes by minority groups are within the bounds of civil-rights law. It agreed with housing-rights zealots that zoning and underwriting policies that have a harmful effect — or disparate impact — on minorities are illegal, even if that harm is unintentional. Sometime-conservative Anthony Kennedy...

The U.S. Department of Justice issued two reports last week, both growing out of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of Michael Brown. The first report, about "the shooting death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson" ought to be read by every American. It says in plain English what facts have been established by an autopsy on Michael Brown's body — by three different pathologists, including one representing the family of Michael Brown — by DNA examination of officer Darren Wilson's gun and police vehicle, by examination of the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown...

Racial Politics: Unable to pin racism charges on Ferguson policeman Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, Attorney General Eric Holder is using half-baked data to manufacture a case of racism against his entire police force. Holder's race-baiting civil rights crew combed through several years of Ferguson Police Department data on traffic stops, searches and arrests and "found a pattern of racial disparities in Ferguson's police activities." "African Americans are overrepresented in FPD's vehicular stops" and victims of "racial bias," Holder concludes in his report.

Obama Lawless Amnesty Costs Exposed – Congress AWOL? Exposed: Holder Uses Tax Dollars to Attack the Police Judicial Watch Fighting Against Disparate Impact Discrimination in Texas Obama Lawless Amnesty Costs Exposed – Congress AWOL? Despite all the budgetary pressure impacting vital programs of importance to the American people, the Obama administration apparently feels there’s still plenty of money to go around for illegal aliens. That’s what we learned back on September 9, 2014, when we obtained documents from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that showed the Obama Administration paid Baptist Children and Family Services (BCFS) $182,129,786...

Sleazy race-agitators like Eric Holder and Barack Obama want you to think that America has a malignant, systemic problem of mostly white police departments unfairly targeting blacks, while somehow also keeping many blacks from becoming cops themselves. From that same timeworn narrative they’d have us all believe that any and all troubles faced by any black person today are, and always will be, attributable to some feature of the existence of white people on this planet throughout history. This carefully orchestrated mass-hallucination has many names, among them the modern sophists’ favorites: ‘disparate impact doctrine’ and ‘critical race theory.’ Despite even...

A federal judge overturned the Obama administration’s “desperation” move to try to find more ways to prove discrimination in housing in a decision Monday that also delivered a searing rebuke to Thomas Perez, a Cabinet official whom liberals are pushing to be the next attorney general. Judge Richard J. Leon ruled that the administration cannot rely on “disparate impact” to judge discrimination, dealing a blow to civil rights groups that said the analytical tool gave them more room to file discrimination cases. Potentially just as important for President Obama’s postelection moves was the rebuke Judge Leon delivered to Mr. Perez,...

The White House in general, and Perez in particular, like disparate impact theory because it "sets a very low bar for proving discrimination" The idea of “disparate impact” is an abomination that has taken root in the business world and is being pushed into other sectors as well, such as housing and labor. This idea holds that “a defendant can be held liable for discrimination for a race-neutral policy that statistically disadvantages a specific minority group even if that negative “impact” was neither foreseen nor intended. In such cases, defendants can be forced to pay for harm caused not by...

Federal regulators Tuesday accused two large employers of improperly using criminal-background checks in hiring, the latest salvo in a contentious debate over whether such screening amounts to discrimination against black applicants. In complaints filed in federal courts in Illinois and South Carolina, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said two companies discount retailer Dollar General Corp. and a U.S. unit of German auto maker BMW AG generally barred potential employees based on the criminal checks, when they should have reviewed each applicant. The commission said the policies had the effect of discriminating against black applicants. The suits underscore increasing government scrutiny...