# Executive Order 14281 **Executive Order 14281**, "Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy," was signed by President [[Donald Trump]] on **April 23, 2025**, and published in the Federal Register on April 28. It declares that liability based on [[Disparate Impact]] "is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution" and sets federal policy "to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible." ## Why it matters Since [[Griggs v. Duke Power Company]] in 1971, federal civil rights law has reached rules that discriminate in effect, not only those that discriminate on purpose. Congress wrote that standard into the employment law in 1991, and the Supreme Court upheld it under the [[Fair Housing Act of 1968]] in 2015. A president cannot repeal those statutes or overrule that decision. What this order does instead is direct every agency to stop using the theory, to rewrite the regulations built on it, and to drop cases that depend on it. In the eighteen months since, it has become the legal backbone of the rollback across housing, lending and federally funded programs. ## What it orders - **Revokes presidential approvals** that the Justice Department's Title VI rules (which govern recipients of federal money) received in 1966 and 1973, as far as those rules reach discriminatory effects. - **Tells every agency to deprioritize enforcement** of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability, naming Title VII of the [[Civil Rights Act of 1964]] as an example. - **Directs the Attorney General** to begin repealing or amending every agency's Title VI rules that rely on disparate impact, and to report within 30 days on all federal rules and state laws that impose it. - **Orders a 45-day review of pending cases**: by the Attorney General and the [[EEOC]] across all civil rights laws, and by the Attorney General, HUD, the [[CFPB]], the [[FTC]] and other agencies enforcing the [[Equal Credit Opportunity Act]] and the Fair Housing Act. - **Orders a 90-day review of existing consent decrees and court injunctions** that rest on disparate-impact theories. - **Directs the Attorney General** to decide whether federal law overrides state laws that impose disparate-impact liability, and to act against them. ## What followed - **September 2025.** HUD told its fair housing office to put intentional-discrimination cases first, and barred the state and local agencies it funds from bringing disparate-impact claims. After 16 states and the District of Columbia sued, HUD dropped those funding conditions in September 2026. - **December 9, 2025.** The [[Department of Justice]] removed disparate-impact liability from its Title VI rules. - **January 14, 2026.** HUD proposed deleting its Fair Housing Act disparate-impact rule, citing this order. A supplemental proposal followed on August 10, 2026. As of November 1, 2026, it has not been finalized. - **April 22, 2026.** The CFPB finalized a rule removing disparate-impact liability from Regulation B, which implements the [[Equal Credit Opportunity Act]], effective July 21, 2026. ## Limits Lawyers on both sides note that the order cannot change what the statutes say or what the Supreme Court has held. Private plaintiffs can still bring disparate-impact claims under Title VII and the Fair Housing Act, and many states have their own laws allowing them. Bloomberg Law's analysis called the order "more symbolic than impactful" for that reason. Its real effect is on federal enforcement: the government's own investigators, lawyers and grant conditions, which are where most of the follow-on actions have landed. ## See Also - [[Disparate Impact]] - [[Executive Order 14173]]: the January 2025 order that ended federal-contractor affirmative action. - [[Fair Housing Act of 1968]] - [[Griggs v. Duke Power Company]]