Federal agencies have pulled back sharply from civil rights enforcement after a Trump executive order directed them to deprioritize “disparate impact” cases — those targeting policies that appear neutral but disproportionately disadvantage protected groups. The legal standard dates to a 1971 Supreme Court test, was written into law by Congress in 1991, and was upheld by the Court as recently as 2015, so the president could not eliminate it outright. Instead, agencies were told to stop treating such cases as a priority, and they have. The EEOC, the education, housing, justice, and trade agencies have all dropped or closed cases, and the Office of Management and Budget has proposed restricting federal funds for work premised on the theory. There is no public tally of how many cases have been abandoned, but civil rights lawyers describe the effect as sweeping.

The article follows two workers whose complaints stalled as a result: a Pennsylvania man fired after a background check flagged a teenage drug conviction, who was part of an EEOC class action the agency later dropped, and a former Amazon delivery driver who argued that strict route quotas and surveillance fell harder on women, whose case the agency stopped investigating. Private attorneys and advocacy groups are now trying to carry some of these cases forward, but the reporting notes that individuals without resources face a difficult path against large employers, and that attorneys are finding it harder to recruit plaintiffs willing to attach their names publicly.

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