Originally reported: April 24, 2025, Deborah Barfield Berry
USA TODAY
The landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act aimed to prevent workplace discrimination. Trump says it promotes bias and will stop enforcing it.
WASHINGTON ‒ A new Trump executive order could undo years of hard-fought gains against discrimination, civil rights leaders and Constitutional law experts said.
The 60-year-old landmark Civil Rights Act outlawed segregation in public places and banned employment discrimination based on race, color, sex, religion or national origin. Other major federal civil rights laws followed, including one protecting the right to vote for all citizens and another banning discrimination in housing.
Trump signed an executive order on April 23 that would repeal or amend provisions of the act, saying his change “guarantees equality of opportunity, not equal outcomes.”
“It promises that people are treated as individuals, not components of a particular race or group. It encourages meritocracy and a colorblind society, not race- or sex-based favoritism,” the order reads.
Presidents cannot repeal laws, but they can decide not to have government agencies enforce them ‒ and that seems to be what Trump’s order accomplishes, civil rights experts said.
“We rely on the Department of Justice to be the one to bring those sorts of claims in schools and in other places where discrimination can quietly run rampant,’’ said Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center. “This is abandoning their obligation.”
The impact of this policy shift could be significant.
Deprioritizing enforcement essentially guts the law’s effectiveness, said Jason Williams, a professor of Justice Studies at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
“This is not a neutral move,’’ he said. “It’s a calculated rollback that redefines civil rights law in ways that benefit the powerful and harm those the law was meant to protect.”
Experts said while the order will likely be challenged in court, it could cause confusion and alarm in the meantime.
“It’s sending a message to the nation that will undermine the rights of people of color and support those who do not want to protect the rights of people of color,’’ said Gloria J. Browne-Marshall, a professor of Constitutional Law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
“It is meant to terrify those people who believe in justice and have worked and given their lives and livelihoods to have racial justice in this country,’’ she said. “But it’s also red meat for those who want to believe that this country is color blind.”
Civil rights law fought discrimination
The civil rights legislation faced major hurdles and opposition particularly during the Jim Crow-era, but was signed into law in August of 1964 by President Lyndon Johnson.
The law, which, among other things, banned segregation based on race, was designed to hold institutions and programs that receive federal funds accountable for their treatment of people of color.
Civil rights activists said the law and its broader interpretation to include women and other minority groups has made a difference in public sector jobs, including in agencies like fire departments where women had sometimes been denied access.
Lots of people, including white men, had also been discriminated against in the workplace because of issues like short stature and benefitted from protections in the law, said Barbara Arnwine, president and founder of Transformative Justice, a national civil rights organization.
“That’s something that people want to forget,’’ she said.
Browne-Marshall said she’s particularly worried about the confusion Trump’s order could cause and how much litigation it will require to clarify what the executive branch can and cannot do. Meanwhile, she said, pending cases could be muddled and people may not know what rights they have.
“Over 60 years of legislation and litigation and protest undermined by the force of one pen,’’ said Browne-Marshall, author of “A Protest History of the U.S.”
‘Restoring equality’
The administration said the order, titled “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” is aimed at addressing what Trump called “the unlawfulness of disparate-impact liability.’’
The law requires a policy or action to be changed if it has a “disparate impact” leading to discrimination of a particular group, even if that was not its intent. The administration argues that this disparate-impact liability violates the Constitution, federal civil rights laws and “basic American ideals” because it requires businesses to consider race to avoid “crippling legal liability.”
“It not only undermines our national values, but also runs contrary to equal protection under the law and, therefore, violates our Constitution,” the order reads.
The order called for federal agencies to “deprioritize enforcement” of statutes and regulations that include “disparate-impact liability.’’
It also calls for reviews of pending investigations and civil lawsuits that rely on disparate-impact efforts. Under the order, the Attorney General will repeal or amend regulations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act related to disparate-impact liability.
Trump said the order protects the American dream, which is under threat by “a pernicious movement” seeking to transform America’s promise of equal opportunity into a divisive pursuit of results preordained by irrelevant immutable characteristics, regardless of individual strengths, effort, or achievement.”
Beyond the boundaries
Despite Republican majorities in the House and Senate, activists don’t expect lawmakers to take the drastic step of trying to change the law because it would face significant pushback from citizens.
Congress created the laws and the U.S. Supreme Court has supported their enforcement, Browne-Marshall said. She called Trump’s order overreaching.
“From a legal standpoint, what the executive order was trying to do is beyond the boundaries and limits of that office,” she said. “But we have to see if the other two branches are going to stand up for themselves.”
If the Justice Department stops enforcing the law, it will damage civil rights, activists said.
“It’s been their long-standing roles to do that coordination and to bring those sorts of cases,’’ Goss Graves said.
‘Ideological wedge’
The civil rights law has been in place through the presidencies of other Republicans, including Ronald Reagan, both Bushes and Trump’s first term, advocates said.
Arnwine called the issue an “ideological wedge” that Trump wants to use to gain points with his political base.
“He believes that racial resentment is an effective tool,’’ she said. “And it is.”
“Whenever he’s unpopular, his go-to is to go to two things where he continues to have massive popularity among his followers and that’s race and deportation, which is the same thing. It’s all race,’’’ she said. “And he plays that card over and over again.”
She and other activists said efforts to push back against the order will require a substantial public response.
“It should be a call to action and a reminder that all of us have to join together and fight for those foundational ideas,” Goss Graves said, “the idea that we are all equal, the idea that we can be safe in spaces like work or at school, and the idea that no matter who you are, you can be treated with dignity.”