Woodstock Institute Senior Regulatory Policy Associate Jane Doyle discusses the importance of SB 3777, the Civil Rights Safeguard Act, in this op-ed published in Crain’s Chicago Business. The legislation would enshrine disparate impact in the Illinois Human Rights Act, upholding this critical anti-discrimination legal framework in Illinois even as it faces attacks at the federal level.
Disparate impact — where a superficially neutral policy has the effect of excluding certain groups — has historically been a crucial enforcement tool to combat discrimination. Take the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) for example. ECOA says that creditors can’t deny applicants or treat them differently based on race or gender and makes it illegal to discourage them from applying. In the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, multiple lenders were sued for ECOA violations after steering Black and Hispanic borrowers into expensive subprime mortgages.
