Proposed Bill Eliminates Disparate Impact Lawsuits, Requiring Proof of Intent to Sue Over Job and Housing Bias

The “Restoring Equal Opportunity Act” proposes a major overhaul of federal civil rights law by eliminating the ability to sue based on “disparate impact.” This means that if this bill passes, you can no longer challenge an employment or housing policy just because it has an unfair, disproportionate effect on a protected group (like based on race, sex, or religion), unless you can prove the employer or landlord intended to discriminate.

The End of "Unintentional" Discrimination Lawsuits

Right now, under laws like Title VII for employment and the Fair Housing Act, a policy can be challenged if it looks neutral but statistically harms one group much more than others. Think of a hiring test that isn't required for the job but causes a disproportionate number of qualified minority candidates to fail. That’s a disparate impact claim. Section 3 and Section 4 of this bill gut that concept entirely. They explicitly state that no one can bring a lawsuit under these acts based solely on a disparate impact. For anyone seeking a remedy, the burden shifts entirely to proving discriminatory intent—that the company or landlord actually set out to disadvantage a protected group. This is a huge shift, making it significantly harder to challenge systemic practices that lock people out, even if no one sends an email saying, “Let’s exclude Group X.”

What This Means for Your Job and Your Apartment Hunt

For the average person, this bill changes the rules of the game when fighting subtle discrimination. Say your employer uses an automated software tool for promotions that, statistically speaking, ends up favoring men over women for management roles, even though the tool’s algorithm is facially neutral. Currently, you could potentially challenge that policy based on the unequal outcome (disparate impact). Under this new bill, that challenge goes away. You would have to somehow prove that the company chose that software specifically because they wanted to prevent women from getting promoted. That’s a much higher bar, making it easier for employers to use policies that perpetuate existing inequalities, so long as they can claim they didn’t mean to.

In housing, consider a landlord who adopts a strict, blanket policy against renting to anyone with any criminal record, regardless of the severity or how long ago it happened. If that policy disproportionately excludes minority applicants due to historical disparities in the justice system, it might currently face a disparate impact challenge under the Fair Housing Act. This bill removes that option. The landlord could maintain the policy without liability, provided they can show the policy was adopted for a neutral reason, like general safety, even if the effect is discriminatory.

Wiping Out the Old Rules

Section 5 of the bill takes things a step further by nullifying specific, previously approved federal regulations from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ). These regulations were the backbone of how federal agencies enforced anti-discrimination laws, including the use of disparate impact analysis under Title VII (employment) and Title VI (federal aid). By voiding these specific regulatory interpretations, the bill not only changes the law but also removes the existing administrative framework used to investigate and regulate these types of claims. This creates immediate uncertainty about how federal agencies will police discrimination going forward, effectively stripping agencies of established tools used to ensure fairness.