The Left rarely gives the Trump administration a win. But they can’t ignore this anymore.
And now Pam Bondi just got high praise from the last person she ever expected.
Washington Post Backs Bondi’s Rollback of Disparate Impact Doctrine
In a Wednesday editorial, The Washington Post’s board commended U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi for rescinding the long-standing “disparate impact” doctrine at the Department of Justice, arguing it had distorted civil rights enforcement by prioritizing racial outcomes over intentional discrimination.
The board described the doctrine as a flawed expansion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964:
“It says that different average outcomes among groups — even if there was no intent to discriminate — can still be a civil rights violation. Institutions that receive Justice Department grants have been regulated according to this standard, prohibited from doing anything that has the ‘effect’ of creating disparities among groups.”
Bondi’s directive, which eliminates disparate impact liability for DOJ grant recipients under Title VI, addresses what she called penalties for “unintentional disparate outcomes, which the recipient may not even know about without investigation.”
The Post highlighted how the prior approach could compel institutions to “classify their employees and students based on race” and, in some instances, “impose racial preferences” or quotas to avert scrutiny. “In some circumstances, those preferences were mandated,” the board noted, quoting Bondi that the doctrine “seems to both forbid and require the same conduct.”
Roots in Trump’s Executive Order
The move aligns with President Donald Trump’s April executive order, which directed the elimination of disparate impact liability “to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.”
The order critiqued the concept for creating a “near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination” based on outcome differences alone, regardless of intent or equal opportunity.
The Post framed Bondi’s action as a targeted correction: “Some of the Trump administration’s anti-woke agenda has been irresponsible, but this is a reasonable correction to past overreach.”
It cautioned that future Democratic administrations could revive similar policies, noting: “But if a future Democratic administration wants to recommit to woke politics, it will still have many tools at its disposal. One of them is the legal doctrine of ‘disparate impact,’ which encourages companies, universities and state and local governments to fixate on race and ethnicity to a fault.”
Defending the Change Amid Criticism
Critics have argued the rollback could enable discrimination, but the editorial dismissed those claims as “bogus,” emphasizing that intentional bias remains prohibited: “Claims that these revisions somehow authorize discrimination are bogus. They do the opposite. Purposely treating one group differently than another remains illegal, as it should. Intent matters. Otherwise, the federal government has a free-floating license to zealously police the racial composition of private institutions.”
A DOJ spokesperson, responding to inquiries, directed to the department’s press release, which stated:
“The Department’s new rule reflects the best reading of Title VI, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized for over twenty years. Title VI has and will continue to prohibit intentional discrimination. The Department’s new rule ensures that recipients of federal funding will be judged on their actual conduct, not on statistical outcomes or circumstances beyond their control.”
