By 怡如 柯 @Adobe Stock
Trump Restores the American Dream
In what is being greeted as a “long overdue“ reform, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy, will enable a color-blind society to dismantle the official policy architecture supporting the false notion that America is structurally racist.
The Trump White House has finally taken the important step to restore meritocracy to American society.” President Trump’s order describes the long-overdue reform:
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.
In the WSJ, James Freeman reports on the problems that President Trump’s latest EO is trying to solve:
A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes. It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.
Depriving Job Seekers of Success
Employers are finding it difficult, and in some cases impossible, to use bona fide job-oriented evaluations when recruiting. Job seekers are also deprived from being paired with jobs to which their skills are most suited. To put it another way, it deprives job seekers of opportunities for success.
The disparate-impact liability doesn’t allow employers to act in the best interests of the job applicant, the employer, and the American public. Imperiled also is the effectiveness of civil rights laws by mandating, rather than proscribing, discrimination.
As the Supreme Court notes, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Incompatible with the Constitution
In that disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream.
Under the Trump Administration, citizens will be “treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.”
Heather Mac Donald in City Journal notes the “pernicious impact of disparate-impact theory:”
It has been used to invalidate literacy and numeracy standards for police officers and firemen, cognitive skills and basic knowledge tests for teachers, the use of SATs in college admissions, the use of grades for medical licensing exams, credit-based mortgage lending, the ability to discipline insubordinate students, and criminal background checks for employees and renters. It has been used to eliminate prosecution for a large range of crimes…
Left-wing groups are understandably up in arms. They charge the administration with a “fundamental shift in legal philosophy.”
It was disparate-impact theory itself that constituted a radical departure from the premises of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, continues Heather MacDonald:
President Donald Trump merely restores the 1964 law to its original understanding. That pioneering legislation banned intentional discrimination only; disparate-impact theory was a judicial amendment made six years later in response to how, even in 1971, finding invidious intentional discrimination was becoming too difficult to satisfy the advocates.
The Left complains as well that Trump’s’ executive order embraces a “formalist, colorblind conception of equality.” Yes—and so does the Constitution.
Judging by Character
“The whole point of disparate-impact analysis was precisely to be able to turn the force of government against people without evidence that they had unfairly excluded people, “adds Mr. Freeman.
… the Trump order does not instruct the attorney general to repeal parts of a law, something that can only be done with Congress. The order instructs her to change administration policy and regulation while stating that the order “shall be implemented consistent with applicable law.”
Expect more sloppy, inaccurate reporting as the Trump administration continues to ensure that American society is a color-blind meritocracy, and, as Mr. Freeman warns, “a policy goal that is by definition anathema to the Beltway swamp.”
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