Thread by @RichardHanania

I try to explain to people, it sounds crazy. The modern definition of civil rights is basically that government can ban anything it wants, overruling every other right individuals have. I talk to Gail Heriot of the Civil Rights Commission on how it works. richardhanania.substack.com/p/the-law-that…

"Literally any practice you can think of has a disparate impact...If everything is potentially illegal, and government does not have the resources to go after everything, then the government basically has arbitrary power to do whatever it wants under civil rights law."

Are you under the impression that individuals and voters can decide on things like mask mandates, school curriculum, and whether Lia Thomas gets to crush women's swimming?

You clearly have no understanding of "civil rights"!

"I used to offer $10,000 to be given to the favorite charity of whoever could come up with a job qualification that has actually been used in the world that doesn’t have a disparate impact on some group."

I speculate a lottery might work, but really not even that.

Written tests and college degrees both have a disparate impact. Why is one legal and one not?

"The only explanation that comes to mind is that the EEOC likes colleges and universities. That’s a Democratic constituency."

It's a nice luxury when law gets to be whatever you want.

During the CRA debate, Illinois told Motorola they couldn't use a test because of disparate impact.

Everyone across the political spectrum agreed this was wrong, and they wrote provisions in the bill to say CRA wouldn't allow it. Bureaucrats and courts just ignored the law.

What do people say when you point out that civil rights law is arbitrary government power that goes against text of the CRA? They pretty much ignore the text and legislative history and say because the goal of CRA was to help black people, anything is justified.

The Civil Rights Act of 1991 was an important turning point because it created punitive damages for harassment. Before all you could get was the money you lost from discrimination, the harm suffered. Now there was a potential for massive payouts based on vague standards.

Harassment can be cumulative. Whether a joke or compliment is considered "harassment" depends on jokes others have made, etc. This makes employers hyper vigilant, since only workable rule is speech codes. Hence the rise of human resources departments, a result of civil rights law

How civil rights law helped facilitate the illiberal takeover of the universities, particularly the CRA of 1991. Attorneys working for universities used to worry about violating free speech rights, now they worry about doing something in violation of "civil rights," the opposite.