Istook: Disparate Impact

By Ernest Istook

By 5-4, the Supreme Court says you can be punished for civil rights violations, even when you never intended to discriminate illegally. They don’t want equal opportunity; they want equal results. 
 
How? They call it disparate impact. You can be perfectly fair and neutral, but if a minority claims they did not get a fair share of jobs, raises, housing, or loans, then the reasons why don’t matter. You can base decisions purely on poor education, lousy credit, bad job performance, even a criminal record, but it doesn’t matter.
 
Unless your results show the approved ratios, you must pay. 
 
You also can be punished in advance if a statistician or some expert predicts unequal results will eventually occur.
 
The mortgage meltdown that collapsed our economy occurred because lenders were required to make bad loans. With disparate impact, the Supreme Court may make another meltdown happen.

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  1. Forrest, 01 July, 2015

    Well stated!

    “Disparate Impact” will cause total meltdown as it destroys the use of functional job qualifications / standards. Without these qualifications / standards the only possible long-term result is the loss of productivity and economic stability: i.e., chaos!

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