Trump signed EO 14281 directing all agencies to end disparate-impact enforcement, orders AG to repeal Title VI regulations

On April 23, 2025, President Trump signed Executive Order 14281, "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy," directing all federal agencies to deprioritize enforcement of disparate-impact liability "to the maximum degree possible" across all federal enforcement contexts — housing, lending, employment, education, and healthcare. The order instructed the Attorney General to repeal or amend all Department of Justice regulations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act that contemplate disparate-impact liability, and directed every other agency head to identify and repeal or amend similar regulations within their own domains.

Disparate-impact liability has been a foundational civil rights enforcement tool since Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971), the Supreme Court ruling that established that facially neutral policies with discriminatory effects on protected groups can violate civil rights law without proof of discriminatory intent. The doctrine has been used for decades to challenge policies that — while not explicitly targeting race, national origin, or other protected characteristics — produce demonstrably discriminatory outcomes in mortgage lending, school discipline, hiring practices, and housing allocation. The ACLU described EO 14281 as the most sweeping rollback of federal civil rights enforcement since the Civil Rights Act's passage in 1964.

EO 14281 is the originating federal mandate that commanded downstream agency action throughout 2025 and 2026. Federal agencies including the Department of Education, the Department of Transportation, and the Department of Justice subsequently repealed their own disparate-impact regulations in direct implementation of this order. By eliminating the disparate-impact enforcement framework across the federal government, the executive branch effectively narrowed the civil rights protections available to any person claiming that a government-funded program produced discriminatory outcomes — without a congressional vote, a constitutional amendment, or judicial action on the doctrine itself.