The U.S. civil rights agency responsible for enforcing worker rights will stop investigating complaints about company policies that don’t explicitly discriminate but may disproportionately harm certain groups, according to an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press.
The memo, emailed to all area, local and district office directors of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on Sept. 15, says that the agency will discharge by Tuesday any complaints based on “disparate impact liability," a legal concept that argues that even if a policy looks fair on the surface, it can still be discriminatory if it creates unnecessary barriers that make it harder for certain groups of people to succeed.
