“It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.”
Those words, the operative section of “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” one of several executive orders President Donald Trump issued on April 23, mark a giant step forward for equal rights under law, the motivating principle behind ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964.
Unhappily, those motivating principles were frustrated in practice. The legal establishment proved reluctant to interfere with Southern states bent on subjecting black citizens to second-class citizenship.
Thus, the Supreme Court adopted a stingy view of the “privileges and immunities” clause of the…
