The U.S. Department of Education is doing away with the concept that school and university policies can be unintentionally discriminatory.
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The U.S. Department of Education announced Thursday that it’s abandoning provisions of civil rights law that protect students against institutional policies that disparately impact minority groups. Now only intentional discrimination violates the law, according to the department’s final rule.
ED officials say that the decades-old provisions under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “allow demographic data alone to establish that a school violated federal civil rights laws, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy, practice, or discriminatory intent involved,” forcing educational institutions to consider race in their decision-making.
“These regulatory changes will help ensure fair enforcement of Title VI, as intended by Congress,” Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said in a news release. “The Trump administration will always hold schools accountable for discrimination and ensure all students in America receive the equal educational opportunities and equal treatment to which they are entitled by law.”
