Attorney General Bondi’s Guidance on Non-Discrimination for Recipients of Federal Funds Defies Precedent: On July 29, 2025, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a guidance memorandum to all federal agencies that purports to clarify the non-discrimination obligations of those agencies’ grantees and subgrantees. Although the guidance has many flaws, there are two that are particularly noteworthy. First, the guidance claims that race-neutral means of fostering diversity and redressing segregation and the legacy of state-sanctioned discrimination are suspect as examples of “proxy” discrimination. This is despite the fact that both the Supreme Court and the lower federal courts have repeatedly made clear that the use of race-neutral means to foster integration and advance other civil rights goals is permissible. It is worth noting that the fact that Attorney General Bondi got the law badly wrong on proxy discrimination does not mean that proxy discrimination is not a real and pernicious phenomenon in other contexts. Second, there is a pervasive hypocrisy that runs throughout the memorandum. For example, segregation is noxious except when it is not, and the dividing line for when segregation appears to be okay is that it is acceptable when it excludes historically marginalized groups and and it is unacceptable when it purports to prioritize the needs of historically marginalized groups. Thus, in Attorney General Bondi’s upside down worldview, transgender women must be segregated from cisgender women, but affinity groups in workplace and educational settings should not be allowed. Additionally, without apparent irony, the memorandum states that recipients of federal funds should “scrutinize neutral criteria for proxy effects” as a best practice despite that exercise being awfully similar to what racial equity opponents disdain about the disparate impact standard, which is under attack.
Time Limits and Work Requirements Throw Children under the Bus: On July 29, 2025, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent anotice of proposed rulemaking to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Based on the title of the rulemaking, if finalized, the proposed rule would make it easier for public housing authorities (PHAs) and other entities to impose time limits and work requirements on families’ receipt of assistance through programs like the Housing Choice Voucher Program. While the text of the proposed rule will not be available until it is published in the Federal Register for public comment, there are a few key things that we already know. First, we know that the percentage of non-elderly adults without disabilities who are not employed is a very small proportion of all assisted households. Second, we know that – nationwide but especially in high-cost regional housing markets – the private market is unable to consistently meet the needs of households that would be removed from HUD-assisted programs due to time limits (even if they have had self-sufficiency gains over the course of their participation). Third, we know that the most tangible benefits of our assisted housing programs are for children, and, if older adults and persons with disabilities would be exempt from time limits and work requirements, the impact of those conditions will fall most squarely on a universe of households that disproportionately includes families with children. As PRRAC mobilizes with our coalition partners to oppose time limits and work requirements, we will be intensively focused on the impact of such harmful policy changes on children.
Other news and resources
Disparate Impact under Attack: On August 4, 2025, HUD sent what it states is a “final rule” regarding the Fair Housing Act’s disparate impact standard to OMB. It is unclear whether the rule, if it is released from OMB and published in the Federal Register, will mirror the Trump Administration’s 2020 rule, which would have nominally preserved the disparate impact standard while making it practically impossible for people who have been discriminated against to prevail on their claims or if, alternatively, it will purport to do away with the standard entirely. In either event, the framing of the forthcoming action as a final rule signals an attempt to evade the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment provisions, and it is likely that any rule will be inconsistent with the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project as well as the text and purpose of the Fair Housing Act. The disparate impact standard remains a vital tool in the fight to advance racial justice.
Road to Housing Act: On July 29, 2025, the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs unanimously approved the Road to Housing Act, which is an assemblage of many different housing authorizing bills. The individual components address issues ranging from public housing redevelopment to rural housing to Housing Choice Voucher inspections to the expansion of housing supply. PRRAC continues to review and analyze the bill and to look for opportunities for improvement via amendments. An analysis of the bill from our partners at the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) is available here.
Senate HUD Budget Does Not Miss the Mark by As Wide of a Margin as the House: On July 24, 2025, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Year 2026 spending bill for HUD. On a number of key areas, including funding for fair housing enforcement and the Housing Choice Voucher Program, the bill is not as disastrous as that approved by the House Appropriations Committee. However, it would still fall short of what would be needed to avoid the loss of vouchers, much less of what would be needed to solve the housing affordability crisis. An analysis of the bill from NLIHC is available here.
