President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order last Wednesday, news of which the press is busily trying to spike. Titled RESTORING EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY AND MERITOCRACY, the EO gets right to the heart of the matter.

Section 1. Purpose. A bedrock principle of the United States is that all citizens are treated equally under the law. This principle 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. Adherence to this principle is essential to creating opportunity, encouraging achievement, and sustaining the American Dream.
But a pernicious movement endangers this foundational principle, 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. A key tool of this movement is disparate-impact liability, which holds that a near insurmountable presumption of unlawful discrimination exists where there are any differences in outcomes in certain circumstances among different races, sexes, or similar groups, even if there is no facially discriminatory policy or practice or discriminatory intent involved, and even if everyone has an equal opportunity to succeed. Disparate-impact liability all but requires individuals and businesses to consider race and engage in racial balancing to avoid potentially 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.
… As the Supreme Court put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
Disparate-impact liability is wholly inconsistent with the Constitution and threatens the commitment to merit and equality of opportunity that forms the foundation of the American Dream. Under my Administration, citizens will be treated equally before the law and as individuals, not consigned to a certain fate based on their immutable characteristics.
Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.

The EO proceeds from there, including removal of the LBJ administration’s approval of regulations implementing “disparate impact” and direction to the Attorney General to begin removal of related regulations implementing—Trump generously calls them pernicious, I say openly racist—Civil Rights Act of 1966 Title VI. Additionally, the EO instructs the EEOC, HUD, CFPB, FTC, and “other agencies” to take actions necessary to end the use of disparate impact in enforcement actions both ongoing and contemplated.

The EO can be read in its entirety here.