Education Department rescinds disparate impact rule for schools

Rule change eliminates key civil rights enforcement tool in schools

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Education Department said in a rule change announced Thursday that it will no longer consider school policies that disproportionately harm one group of students as discriminatory unless the discrimination is intentional, rescinding a decades-old standard for civil rights enforcement.

The department said it would remove a number of disparate impact provisions from its regulations related to the implementation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination on the basis of race or national origin, according to the Associated Press.

The change shifts the legal standard for evaluating civil rights complaints in schools. The disparate impact standard had allowed investigators to examine whether policies produced unequal outcomes across racial groups, even in the absence of evidence that a school district intended to discriminate. Under the revised approach, only policies adopted with deliberate discriminatory intent will be treated as violations of Title VI in the department’s regulations.

In schools, the standard has been applied most notably to discipline policies, the department said. Across the country, data has shown Black students are more likely to receive punishments that remove them from the classroom, including suspensions, expulsions, and transfers to alternative schools, according to the department’s announcement.

Racial justice advocates have pushed for policies that would reduce those disparities, the department noted, and those efforts have drawn opposition from the Trump administration.