Since its founding, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) has fought for the rights of Black Americans to work, live, and thrive without racially imposed barriers. Through litigation, advocacy, and public education, LDF works to increase fairness and equal opportunity in all aspects of the economy.
In fact, in one of our first cases in 1940, we secured a vital decision that required equal pay for black and white teachers. This work continues today. To advance the economic security of Black communities, it is important that we protect federal policies that advance fairness and equal opportunity.
From access to clean water to fair employment conditions, federal agencies touch nearly every aspect of our daily lives. That is why we have compiled a FAQ to help you learn about how the work of the federal government — and attempts to undermine efforts to address racial inequities — may impact your life.
From how our food is grown and made to how much we’re paid, the work of federal agencies has real-world consequences. When our elected officials come together to make laws about these issues, it would be nearly impossible for them to include every detail about how a bill might work in the real world. Putting these laws into practice often requires highly technical knowledge about what the day-to-day impact might be—decisions better made by experts with the benefit of community input rather than politicians.
For 40 years, courts rightfully turned to the subject matter experts at federal agencies to issue regulations implementing broad statutes in more specific ways, so long as the agencies’ regulations were reasonable interpretations of laws passed by Congress. We’ve come to know this as the doctrine of Chevron deference.
On June 28, 2024, the Supreme Court decided in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo to eliminate Chevron deference Chevron deference, a longstanding legal principle that allowed federal agencies a certain authority to interpret the laws they implement on behalf of Americans.
In a 6-3 vote, the Supreme Court decided that federal judges should independently interpret federal statutes and should not defer to federal agencies’ interpretation of broad laws. Federal judges will now have even more power to invalidate important regulations in a wide range of areas – even when they are not experts in the field.
A few days after the Loper Bright decision, the Supreme Court issued another 6-3 ruling that will make it easier to challenge federal regulations. In Corner Post, Inc. v. Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Supreme Court held that the six-year time limit for challenging a regulation does not start until the day the plaintiff is injured by that regulation. In practice, Corner Post will likely allow plaintiffs to challenge many more rules—including regulations finalized decades ago.
The work of federal agencies touches nearly every aspect of daily life, and many of their regulations impact critical issues affecting Black people like overtime pay, students loans, employment discrimination, eviction protections and fair housing, and access to clean water and affordable internet services. While the decision in Loper Bright does not undermine these regulations or others that are grounded in the correct interpretation of the statutes they implement. Yet those opposed to civil rights could seek to use the decision to attack such regulations.
Here are just a few of the federal agencies and regulations and their critical impact:
Department of Labor (DOL)
In 2024, the DOL issued a final rule updating the standards for which workers must receive a minimum wage and overtime pay. The rule raises the salary threshold to exempt workers from overtime protections and requires automatic increases in that salary threshold every three years. In doing so, this rule requires that many workers who have been working more than 40 hours per week without any extra pay either get paid for overtime or get a raise. The Department of Labor estimates that this could benefit approximately 1 in 5 Black workers.
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC)
Racial discrimination continues to limit employment opportunities for Black people, restricting them to lower wage jobs and less lucrative industries compared to white people with similar levels of education. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has issued regulations outlining when employers can take voluntary remedial action to address discriminatory practices at their companies and in the labor market. For more on the EEOC’s regulations and what employers, businesses, and funders can do to increase racial equity, read LDF’s guidance.
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Despite living in a country with one of the most advanced medical systems in the world, Black people in the United States suffer disproportionately from preventable disease and early death. Many of these racial disparities persist even when accounting for socioeconomic status, lifestyle, insurance coverage, and other risk factors. While gaps in access to care and disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards, among other factors, contribute to these disparities, racial bias in the medical profession is also a driving force.
The HHS recently issued a rule outlining what state Medicaid agencies, Medicare, many health insurance plans, and most hospitals and providers must do to comply with the antidiscrimination provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Among other measures, the rule protects against algorithmic bias and discrimination based on multiple federally protected characteristics, including race and gender, pregnancy, LGBTQ+ status, and disability.
To learn more about discrimination in health care and LDF’s work, check out our reproductive rights and racial justice FAQ, LDF’s comment on antidiscrimination protections in healthcare. The Thurgood Marshall Institute brief LDF and Healthcare highlights the legal battles fought by LDF throughout the 20th century to ensure Black Americans have access to quality medical care.
Department of Education
Due to factors including the racial wealth gap, Black students borrow more than other students for the same degrees, and Black college graduates owe an average of $7,400 more than their white peers the moment they graduate. The Department of Education has taken steps to try to ease the burden of student loans, including finalizing rules that would provide debt relief to students who have been defrauded by their colleges and releasing draft regulations that would provide debt relief to students facing ballooning interest or who entered repayment two decades ago.
To learn more about the impact of student loan debt, read LDF’s original content piece How Student Loan Forgiveness can Help Close the Racial Wealth Gap and Advance Economic Justice.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) proposed two regulations that could bolster tenants’ rights and increase fair housing throughout the country.
First, HUD proposed regulations that would make it harder for landlords to evict someone living in public housing or in properties receiving federal rental assistance without proper notice. Black people, and particularly Black women, face the highest eviction rates in the country; this proposed regulation will help ensure fairness and give tenants more protections.
Second, HUD proposed a regulation that would require communities that receive funding from the agency to engage in a robust fair housing planning process to identify barriers to fair housing opportunities for Black people and other underserved communities and protected classes, incorporate community feedback, and develop a plan to address those barriers. For example, through this process, state and local decisionmakers could site affordable housing throughout entire communities and not just in segregated, high-poverty areas. This proposed regulation will help ensure that fair housing planning is done in a way that is collaborative and allows access to opportunities for Black people to live in decent, safe, and affordable housing in the communities they choose.
To learn more on LDF’s work on housing, listen to the Justice Above All podcast on evictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, read our report Bad Housing Blues: Discrimination in the Housing Choice Voucher Program in Memphis, Tennessee, and read our original content series by Julián Castro The Los Angeles County Experience: Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing in America’s Largest County.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
The EPA proposed a new regulation that can affect how Black people access clean water. Due to the withholding of resources and intentional disinvestment in Black and low-income communities, those communities are more likely to experience Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) violations, which can lead to serious health problems for these communities. The construction of new water and wastewater infrastructure in rural and some small urban areas has excluded Black communities. The EPA proposed a new regulation that could help communities who suffer from chronic SDWA noncompliance by allowing those communities to access increased resources like upgraded water infrastructure through consolidation. The rule could also help communities that are not connected to newer water and wastewater infrastructure. While the restructuring process must include a racial justice assessment, affordability protections, and community input in order to ensure that it benefits the people the water system serves, the proposed regulation could benefit rural communities like Alabama, where Black communities have struggled for nearly a century to access water and sewer at all.
To learn more about the water affordability crisis facing Black communities, read our groundbreaking 2019 report Water/Color: A Study of Race and the Water Affordability Crisis in America’s Cities and the Water/Color 2023 update.
FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION (FCC)
Black Americans disproportionately pay higher rates for worse service or lack broadband access entirely. The unequal access to broadband exacerbates racial divides in education, health care, banking, and other services. The FCC finalized a rule prohibiting digital discrimination, including policies that have an unfair, disproportionate impact on Black communities. The rule could lead to policy reforms and systems improvements and promote digital opportunity for everyone. Read LDF’s brief filed in support of the digital discrimination rule.
The decision in Loper Bright does not undermine these regulations or others that are grounded in the correct interpretation of the statutes they implement. Yet those opposed to civil rights could seek to use the decision to attack such regulations.
People who endure appraisal bias suffer financial fallout not because of the actual value of their home, but because of the color of their skin. The origins of this discriminatory practice date back decades.
In this LDF Original Content Series, TMI Senior Fellow Sec. Julián Castro explores the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule, and reflects on redressing the extensive barriers to quality housing for many groups in Los Angeles County.
LDF and the National Fair Housing Alliance report investigates housing discrimination in the voucher program in Memphis, TN, and identifies recommendations to ensure all renters have safe and affordable housing.
The report examines drivers of racial inequity in water access, water and wastewater crises in urban and rural Black communities, strategies to address water affordability through legislation and litigation, and recommendations for federal, state, and local governments to equal access to clean, safe, and affordable water.
The student loan debt is at a crisis level in the United States. And students of color are bearing bear the brunt. Forgiving student loans is a necessary step toward closing this gap, which is critical for advancing racial and economic justice in the United States.
