Newsroom

The last stretch before the start of the 2020 census is upon us. The once-a-decade, national head count is scheduled to kick off next January. Census workers start in the village of Toksook Bay and other parts of rural Alaska when the ground there is frozen enough for door-to-door visits. Then, beginning in March 2020, the U.S. government’s most expansive peacetime operation rolls out to households in the rest of the country. The data collected will be used for a major reset in political power and federal funding through 2030. Each state’s share of representatives in Congress, as well as votes in the Electoral College, will be determined for the next decade by the new population counts. Those counts are also used to distribute more than $880 billion a year in federal funds for Medicare, schools and other public services, according to the latest estimate by The George Washington Institute of Public Policy.

Two years into the Trump presidency, one of the most effective parts of the administration has been its efforts to reduce the federal government’s role in promoting civil rights regulation. A recent report from the Washington Post suggests that this effort could soon enter a new phase, as the government considers a large-scale rollback of measures protecting marginalized groups from discrimination. On January 3, the Post reported that the administration was considering “a far-reaching rollback of civil rights law that would dilute federal rules.” The report noted that a recent internal memo from the Justice Department encouraged civil rights officials to look at how anti-discrimination guidance, some of which is decades old, could be removed or changed and what the effects would be.

The Trump administration stands ready to fulfill a longstanding dream of insurance companies, big banks, and many conservative legal scholars: making it safe to enact policies that are neutral in theory, but which have unequal effects in practice. On Thursday, The Washington Post reported that the administration intends to roll back regulations that bar discrimination on the basis of “disparate impact.” In particular, Trump officials have their eyes on regulations that prevent discrimination in housing. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has already pulled back on investigations into such matters. The concept is relatively simple, but controversial: Disparate-impact regulations prohibit actions that have the effect of discriminating against particular groups, not just those that are intended to do so.

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. Under the concept of disparate impact, actions can amount to discrimination if they have an uneven effect even if that was not the intent, and rolling back this approach has been a longtime goal of conservative legal thinkers.