On Top of the News
Supreme Court Upholds Broad Discrimination Claims Under Housing Law
6/25/15 | Yahoo! News

Behind the Headline
Big Impact: Supreme Court Housing Decision Could Have Significant Effect on Education
6/21/15 | Education Next blog

The Supreme Court ruled today that the Fair Housing Act (FHA) does allow “disparate impact” claims, in which plaintiffs only need to show that a particular practice has a disparate impact on a minority group, not evidence of discriminatory intent. (There was also an Obamacare ruling this morning.)

Josh Dunn has described how the  U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has been using disparate impact analysis to justify new policies on school discipline and school finance. The new policy on discipline, Dunn writes

will encourage schools to tolerate disruptive and dangerous behavior lest they have too many students of one race being punished.  The effect will be to punish students who behave and want to learn since their education will be sabotaged by troublemakers.  And the disruptive will certainly learn, and learn quickly, that their schools are now tolerating even more disruptive behavior.  Sadly these incentives will be strongest in largely minority, urban school districts, like Baltimore’s, where disruptive student behavior is a more significant problem.  Thus, minority students are likely to bear the brunt of these guideline’s harmful effects.

– Education Next