The Trump administration is quietly loosening many Obama-era rules on civil rights.
For instance, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights closed a long-running case of transgender discrimination without providing any legal justification, and ProPublica reported how they "loosened the requirements for campus investigations of civil rights violations and complaints related to sexual assault."
Another example, Reuters reported that Jerry Falwell Jr. has been tapped to head an education reform task force looking into "rules dealing with campus sexual assault,” specifically, “eliminating numerous regulations.”
The civil-rights rollbacks are being applied to other agencies, not just the Department of Education, including the Labor Department, the EPA, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development — just for starters. So, what are these rollbacks, and are they necessary?
These rollbacks have some advocates worried that the federal government will limit its enforcement of civil-rights violations.
One of those is Brenda Shum. She's the director of the education project for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization formed in 1963 that’s focused on equal justice through the rule of law.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been modified to correct the name of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.
