By Tony Kinnett, The Daily Signal | December 11, 2025
Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Tuesday that the Justice Department will no longer have “disparate impact” regulations.
“For decades, the Justice Department has used disparate-impact liability to undermine the constitutional principle that all Americans must be treated equally under the law,” Bondi said in a statement.
“No longer. This Department of Justice is eliminating its regulations that for far too long required recipients of federal funding to make decisions based on race.”
Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, joined the Dec. 10 episode of “The Tony Kinnett Cast” to discuss the Justice Department’s decision.
Read a lightly edited transcript, pasted below, or watch the interview, which starts at around 26:50.
Tony Kinnett: She’s done it. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general on civil rights, she has announced that disparate impact be gone. It is on its way out, finally. And man, it has overstayed its welcome.
So, we go to the legal expert of legal experts, Hans von Spakovsky from The Heritage Foundation, because you may be out there going, “Disparate impact—Tony, I hate corporate words. What are we talking about?”
Hans, give us a little bit of perspective here. Why do the words “disparate impact” mean so much to the United States?
Hans von Spakovsky: Well, unfortunately, this is a, frankly, very dubious legal theory that has been used now for decades in a wrong way to violate the equal protection we’re all entitled to.
And what we’re talking about is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, Civil Rights Act 1965—it banned racial discrimination. It basically put into force the equal treatment requirements of the 14th Amendment.
And Title VI specifically says that if you’re getting federal money for some kind of program, you can’t discriminate on the basis of race.
Well, unfortunately, the Justice Department, decades ago, issued these regulations in which they said, Oh, you know what? You don’t violate that statute just if you intentionally set out to discriminate, but also if whatever you do has a disparate impact.
And what they’re talking about is, let’s say you have a totally neutral policy. Race is not considered. But for some reason, it affects members of one race more than others. Well, then the Justice Department said, well, you’re violating the law. And therefore, your federal funding can get cut off.
And let me give you—can I give you an example of the absurdity of this?
Kinnett: Please. We are all about examples and receipts here on “The Tony Kinnett Cast.”
Von Spakovsky: OK. And that’s why what the Justice Department did is so important and long overdue.
In 2001, there was a Supreme Court decision. It was called Alexander v. Sandoval. And what happened was this woman sued the Alabama Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming disparate impact.
Why? Because you could only take the driver’s license exam in English. And she said that English-only requirement meant that it had a disparate impact on people who don’t speak English …
Now, fortunately, the Supreme Court, Justice [Antonin] Scalia, said, No. Title VI only prohibits intentional racial discrimination. But the Justice Department never changed its regulations. They kept this disparate impact provision in there.
And now, finally, finally, the Justice Department has said, no, that’s no longer going to be the way we enforce the law.
Kinnett: So, just as a manner of receipt-keeping here, there really is a huge decision by the Department of Justice to roll back some of these because some of the bigger cases in our nation’s history—Griggs v. Duke Power in 1971 said that Duke Power was discriminating against black people, even though there was nothing that showed Duke Power was actually going out of their way to discriminate against black people in signing up for energy services.
Von Spakovsky: Right.
Kinnett: The Albemarle Paper Company v. Moody in 1975. The Supreme Court held that, well, I mean, once a plaintiff shows that there was disparate impact, the company has to prove they’re innocent. Which is wild. This precedent that stood in this country where if someone says, “I think this is racist,” it’s not that they have to prove you were racist. It’s that you have to prove your innocence.
Because, obviously, the only reason that you know the driver’s test in Alabama would be in English is to exclude people who speak other languages.
This kind of harebrained mental gymnastics really started ratcheting up, though, in the Obama years. And that’s when the Department of Justice kicked it into nitrous.
Von Spakovsky: That’s right.
Kinnett: You were on the forefront of that at the time with boxing gloves on. Tell us about the Obama years, throwing this harebrained mental gymnastics of disparate impact racism into high gear.
Von Spakovsky: Well, for example, that attitude really affected elementary, K-12 students, ruining their educational experience.
Why? Because the Obama administration went in and said, if you discipline more, for example, black students than white students, if the ultimate numbers at the end of the year are that you disciplined a greater percentage of black students than white students, then that’s disparate treatment and disparate impact, and you have violated the law.
It didn’t matter.
Kinnett: Because you’re clearly singling out black children, or so, as the administration said.
Von Spakovsky: Right. It didn’t matter if, in fact, the reason for that was because, perhaps, those children actually had greater discipline problems than other kids. That didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what kind of discipline problems the school was experiencing. So, what did that mean? The schools started changing what they did.
They didn’t want their percentages to be out of whack, and so, they would keep disruptive students in classrooms rather than discipline them. So, who did that punish? All the good students, no matter what their race was. They had to be in class with these disruptive students who weren’t disciplined. Why? Because they basically had to meet the quota, the quota system set up by the Obama administration. And that’s what it was. It was a quota system
Kinnett: So, this is now going to shift into [President Donald] Trump One because [former President Barack] Obama had all these practices, of course, not to mention the Civil Rights Division going after housing during the Obama years. I think Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. the Inclusive Communities Project back in 2015.
Now, Trump One gets in and we’re looking for some major rollbacks of this at long last. And that first Department of Justice, they try to roll some stuff back, but it’s a little slow and it’s a little sluggish. And then [President Joe] Biden brings it right back.
Then comes in Pam Bondi in the second administration. Why is this time, this Department of Justice, with what Bondi is doing, with what Harmeet Dhillon is doing, why is this different?
Von Spakovsky: Because the leadership is different. Plus, the preparation is different. Look, Donald Trump came into office the first time. He appointed a lot of what I call retreads. You know, people from prior Republican administrations who weren’t interested in taking the kind of bold action needed to roll back a lot of these things.
Plus, he just wasn’t experienced in—look, he was a businessman. He didn’t realize how much resistance he was gonna get from the bureaucracy, the swamp, as we all call it.
Kinnett: How bad the rot was.
Von Spakovsky: I actually think one of the best things that happened to him was losing that 2020 election. Why? Because it gave him four years to prepare and for his people to prepare for his second term. They came in and were doing things immediately, and we didn’t have any of the kind of delays that we had in the first administration. Plus, the people who he’s appointed are real loyalists and people who really want to roll back the bad things the federal government has done.
Kinnett: I think that’s so understated. And it really, by the way, when I pointed out when Trump was elected, the team of mavericks he already had ready to go, he didn’t just run as himself in 2024, he ran as a team. I mean, he was announcing his picks before the election took place and building this large tent that, essentially, their motto was all right, that’s it.
And it was this idea in the first administration, this sludge that dragged everything down, to come in with a team of mavericks after four years of planning, of course, some of it with The Heritage Foundation, some it with the America First Policy Institute, over 200 different organizations, state officials, federal officials, this massive movement of people that have come in and started digging through the rot, or you’ve called it this pushback, eternal pushback from the bureaucracy.
Now, to see the leadership coming in and writing these decades of wrongs and a Supreme Court that seems pretty equally willing—Producer Nick and I have talked about this quite a bit. It really appears that [Chief Justice] John Roberts and [Justice] Clarence Thomas have axes to grind with these years and years of just disgusting SCOTUS decisions.
I mean, Thomas himself has been on how many dissents in some of these cases that we’ve talked about?
Von Spakovsky: Right.
Kinnett: I’m not just trying to pull daisies out of concrete here. This is some naturally good news that, I mean, how long have we heard about the bakers getting harassed because they wouldn’t bake the LGBTQ+2IA cake?
Von Spakovsky: Right.
Kinnett: This stuff’s huge.
Von Spakovsky: Right. And look, we just on Monday, you know, Dec. 9, we had a case before the Supreme Court, Trump v. Slaughter, in which Trump, the first president in 90 years to challenge a very bad Supreme Court decision issued in 1935, in which the Supreme Court said that, oh, yeah, Congress could set up all these supposedly independent agencies that actually carry out executive branch functions and oh, the president, he’ll have no supervisory control over those organizations and that’s OK.
And Trump has challenged that, as he should, because that was a bad decision. And like I said, no other president, certainly no other Republican president, has ever challenged that.
Kinnett: It really is an important facet of the new administration to challenge why something is there, this worship of the status quo that has enshrined every single legal institution in our country, this idea that, well, I mean, it isn’t killing us all actively, so therefore, it must be fine, and ignoring those who are being targeted directly by these outdated, old systems or bad actors using these old, outdated systems against Americans.
Von Spakovsky: Right.
Kinnett: I wanted to bring it back really quickly, though, to Bondi and to Harmeet Dhillon, just one more time here.
Now that we have seen the DOJ roll back some of these longstanding procedures and policies, what do those two, Harmeet Dhillon and Pam Bondi, need to advocate for? What do they need to push for? What do they need to demand from Congress or demand from the president’s office or demand from the judicial system so that these changes are made permanent?
Von Spakovsky: I think, I mean, the best thing that could happen is for Congress to pass a bill making it clear that only intentional discrimination is covered by the Civil Rights Act. It does not cover disparate impact. And in fact, disparate impact is a violation of the Civil Rights Act. That’s very important.
Now, that’s Congress. But what Bondi and Harmeet Dhillon have got to do now is, remember, this has enormous effect because it affects any program that receives federal money.
Well, Tony, you and I know—look, every single government department, every single government agency, they dole out huge amounts of federal funds to not just private organizations, but local and state governments.
And what Bondi and Dhillon are now going to have to do is make sure that all of those programs at the state and local level that have been discriminating stop discriminating.
Kinnett: If the boom isn’t leveled and those who are vehemently breaking said laws and going against legal practices and going against civil rights practice aren’t not only caught, but then made an example of, hit with the full weight of the law—we’ve talked about this.
I know you and I have talked about this on immigration, on those who are violating labor laws, hiring illegal immigrants, need to be made an example of so that it is made clear what happens when you break the law.
Ten out of 10 stuff. Hans von Spakovsky, the legal mastermind himself over at The Heritage Foundation, who I know you’re grinning from ear to ear at the excellent updates from the DOJ. Thanks for hopping on with us.
Von Spakovsky: Sure. Thanks for having me.
Tony Kinnett is The Daily Signal's national correspondent, and host of both the nationally-syndicated radio show and podcast "Tony Kinnett Cast," and The Daily Signal's Top News in 10.
Original article link
