The U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights announced on July 23 that it had rescinded the disparate-impact provisions from its Title VI regulations, ending the practice of investigating school discipline policies based solely on racial disproportionality without evidence of intentional discrimination. The final rule, effective July 24, eliminates the general disparate-impact prohibition at 34 C.F.R. § 100.3(b)(2), along with related language in § 100.3(b)(3) and an affirmative-action provision.
The rule states that the Department's Title VI regulations now "prohibit intentional discrimination and do not prohibit conduct or activities that have an unintentional disparate impact" and that OCR will not pursue disparate-impact liability against federal funding recipients. The Department justified the move by citing the Supreme Court's 2001 decision in Alexander v. Sandoval, which held that Title VI "prohibits only intentional discrimination," and by referencing Executive Order 14281, titled "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy," issued April 23, 2025.
Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Kimberly Richey said the change would allow schools to address classroom issues without fear that the federal government would weaponize antidiscrimination laws, while adding that the Department will hold schools accountable for intentional discrimination.
How the prior framework worked
For decades, OCR's discipline investigations followed a three-part disparate-impact test. First, investigators determined whether a facially neutral policy or practice produced a disproportionate adverse effect on students of a particular race. Second, they examined whether the policy was educationally necessary. Third, they asked whether a comparably effective, less discriminatory alternative existed.
The agency relied on its Civil Rights Data Collection to establish patterns of racial disproportionality. In a 2024 resolution of a compliance review, for example, OCR found that African American students in Jefferson County Public Schools in Louisville, Kentucky, were roughly three times more likely than white students to receive out-of-school suspension, about 2.2 times as likely to be assigned to a behavior-support alternative school, and over four times as likely to be referred to law enforcement. The district agreed to reforms. OCR used the same framework in an earlier resolution with Cherry Creek School District in Colorado, where the agency cited Civil Rights Data Collection and Colorado Department of Education data showing a disproportionate number of disciplinary sanctions against African American students.
Parallel action at the Department of Justice
The Education Department's rule follows a similar revision by the U.S. Department of Justice, which updated its own Title VI regulations at 28 C.F.R. Part 104 in December 2025. That rule removed the disparate-impact prohibition from § 42.104(b)(2), eliminated the "or effect" language from § 42.104(b)(3), and struck an affirmative-action provision from § 42.104(b)(6). The Justice Department rule served as the model for the Education Department's July 2026 action, and the Education Department noted that it acted under the Justice Department's coordination role under Executive Order 12250.
The legal foundation and its contestation
The Sandoval decision held that Title VI's statutory text reaches only intentional discrimination and that no private right of action exists to enforce the disparate-impact regulations. The Department's rescission relies on that holding. Critics point out that the regulations remained in force for 25 years after Sandoval and were used in numerous resolution agreements. The Department argued in the Federal Register that the prior standard was "in considerable tension with the statute and the Constitution."
The open question is whether the Civil Rights Data Collection will continue to track discipline disparities and whether the kind of systemic reforms negotiated in Oakland, Cherry Creek, and Jefferson County can still be reached without the disparate-impact framework, or whether state agencies and private litigants acting under state law will fill the gap.