What in the World Is Going on with HUD’s Disparate Impact Rule: Back in February of this year, PRRAC joined with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs to submit a comment letter opposing the proposed rescission by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of its rule setting forth a burden shifting framework for disparate impact claims under the Fair Housing Act. We submitted our letter at the conclusion of an unduly short 30-day window for public comment. Ordinarily, at that point, we would expect HUD to move on to reviewing the comments it received, summarizing and responding to them, making any revisions precipitated by the comments, and then packaging all of that up in a final rule that it would transmit to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for interagency review before publication in the Federal Register. And, in the context of the extreme (possibly AI-aided and almost inarguably reckless) haste with which the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau moved to finalize its revisions to its Equal Credit Opportunity Act regulations, we might have even expected to see a final rule land at OMB sooner rather than later. However, what landed back at the OMB on May 6, 2026 (and which is still pending there as of yesterday) is characterized as a proposed rule. At a meeting that PRRAC held with OMB staff on June 16, 2026 pursuant to Executive Order 12866, we received confirmation that what is pending at OMB is in fact a proposed rule and not a mis-described final rule.
Why would HUD send a second proposed rule on disparate impact to OMB just four months after sending such a rule and three months after the close of the comment period on that earlier proposed rule? We cannot say definitively, and we will continue to monitor the situation. For now, it is worth noting that the Office of Legal Counsel at the U.S. Department of Justice recently sent a memorandum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) that advised the EEOC to adopt an unjustifiably narrow construction of the scope of disparate impact employment discrimination liability under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This bad, lawless advice is based on a misinterpretation of the Supreme Court’s decision regarding the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais. That decision, while devastating, did not implicate the scope of disparate impact liability under statutes for which Congress’s power to legislate derives from the Thirteenth Amendment and the Commerce Clause. Could the Trump Administration be contemplating a similar interpretation of the Fair Housing Act? Time will tell.
Other news and resources
PRRAC Joins LDF-Led Letter Opposing HUD Equal Access Rule Revisions: On June 29, 2026, PRRAC joined a comment letter led by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) opposing a proposed HUD rule that would gut the department’s Equal Access Rule with devastating consequences for LGBTQ+ individuals and for transgender people of color, in particular.
Buy Your Ticket to Drafting Justice: A Summer Celebration of Movement Wins: We are excited to announce that we will be honoring Demetria McCain of LDF at PRRAC’s inaugural Drafting Justice, a summer gathering dedicated to celebrating recent wins in civil rights and affordable housing. The evening will be hosted on Thursday, July 16th from 6 PM to 9 PM at the new Atlas Brew Works in the Bridge District of Washington, D.C. You can purchase your tickets here.
A Break from the Parade of Horribles – Proposed Football (Soccer) Changes: Cheers from a nearby conference room where partner organization staff were watching the epic Egypt-Argentina match punctuated the drafting of this edition of the PRRAC Update. There are myriad problems with this year’s World Cup, but, while the problems keep worsening (see: the unfortunately successful attempt to “suspend” Folarin Balogun’s red card suspension), football still finds a way to be compelling. No matter what Gianni Infantino and Donald Trump get up to, we just cannot quit the World Cup. But, leaving the big picture governance questions aside, here are three changes that would enhance the beautiful game:
- On Hydration Breaks: This is not a controversial opinion. They need to go. Hydration breaks – as in all recent, prior competitive contexts – should be limited to circumstances where they are justified by weather conditions, should be shorter, and should not allow television broadcasters to cut away to full advertising breaks.
- On Toweling Off the Ball on Throw-Ins: The anti-time-wasting changes around throw-ins implemented for the World Cup have been positive and have largely resulted in the avoidance of the slog of long throws that was this past English Premier League season. But we can go a step further. Players should not be able to towel off the ball before taking a throw-in.
- On Extra Time: This might seem like a more controversial opinion now than it would have been at the start of the World Cup, but play should progress straight to penalties after the expiration of regular time. I get that no one who watched extra time in the Argentina-Cabo Verde match would want that experience snatched back from them, but that is merely the exception that proves the rule. These players are so, so tired (keep in mind the long club season preceding the World Cup). The level of play is just never going to be high in extra time, especially as we progress deep into the knock-out rounds.
