A final rule issued without notice and comment by the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) on July 24, 2026, removes provisions that impose or exemplify liability based on disparate impact under OCR’s regulations implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI). It takes effect immediately.

Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. OCR’s Title VI regulation, along with other executive branch agencies’ Title VI regulations, previously included provisions that interpreted Title VI to prohibit not only conduct that has a discriminatory purpose (intentional discrimination) but also conduct that has a discriminatory effect (disparate impact).

Over a year ago, via Executive Order (EO) 14281 President Trump announced that “[i]t is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible” and directed the Attorney General to initiate the repeal or amendment of Title VI regulations for all agencies to the extent that they contemplate disparate impact liability. Over the course of the past year, a number of executive branch agencies have amended their Title VI regulations in accordance with EO14281.

HHS OCR has followed suit–but emphasized in the rule that it would have independently initiated steps toward making these changes regardless of EO 14281 since “disparate-impact liability also raises serious constitutional concerns, is in considerable tension with the best reading of Title VI, creates confusion and increases the costs of compliance for funding recipients, and overall does not serve the public interest.”

Among the provisions that have been removed are those that:

• prohibit the use of criteria or methods of administration which have the effect of subjecting individuals to discrimination because of their race, color, or national origin;
• require affirmative action to overcome the effects of prior discrimination where the recipient previously discriminated against persons on the ground of race, color, or national origin; and
• allow a recipient to give special consideration to race, color, or national origin to make the benefits of its program more widely available to such groups, not then being adequately served.

The Supreme Court previously found that individuals lack a private right of action for disparate impact claims under Title VI in Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 US 275 (2001). Now with the executive branch’s elimination of disparate impact liability under various agency Title VI regulations, including OCR’s, individuals who have race, color, or national origin-based disparate impact claims against federal financial recipients are effectively without recourse under Title VI. However, other statutes, such as the Fair Housing Act, still recognize disparate impact, and OCR’s regulatory changes are limited just to Title VI.