By Tom Woods
April 25, 2025
Yesterday the White House released an executive order called "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy," taking aim at the inane and destructive "disparate impact" policy.
According to this policy, if any employment requirement has a "disparate impact" on the races, the employer can be hauled into court and forced to defend the requirement - easier said than done.
That includes requiring that applicants pass a test (even an excruciatingly simple test), or hold a high school diploma, or not have dishonorable military discharges. If the net result of such requirements is a disproportionate percentage of white people qualifying, the Justice Department can leap into action.
Rather than have their lives and businesses destroyed, employers generally just do what the regime wants and engage in race-based hiring.
Even if all sides concede that no discriminatory intent existed, the employer can still be punished.
According to the Order, disparate impact
holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially crippling legal liability.
And then further:
On a practical level, disparate-impact liability has hindered businesses from making hiring and other employment decisions based on merit and skill, their needs, or the needs of their customers because of the specter that such a process might lead to disparate outcomes, and thus disparate-impact lawsuits. This has made it difficult, and in some cases impossible, for employers to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting, which prevents job seekers from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited - in other words, it deprives them of opportunities for success. Because of disparate-impact liability, employers cannot act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public.
An accompanying Fact Sheet summarizes the practical effects of the order:
- It directs all agencies to deprioritize enforcement of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability.
- The Order instructs the Attorney General to repeal or amend all Title VI (racial nondiscrimination) regulations that contemplate disparate-impact liability.
- It directs the administration to assess all pending investigations, lawsuits, and consent judgements that rely on a theory of disparate-impact liability, and take appropriate action.
This should have been done a long time ago. I have no further comment beyond that.
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