The people whose literal job is to investigate housing discrimination are being told they can’t investigate housing discrimination. HUD civil rights lawyers got fired for going to Congress with concerns that the agency was gutting fair housing enforcement. So they did the most American thing possible — they built a website. “Dear America” is a collection of anonymous employee letters from inside HUD, and the picture they paint is grim: if a case involves race, gender, or sexual orientation, you’re not allowed to touch it. The agency that exists to fight discrimination has been ordered to stop fighting discrimination.
Meanwhile, HUD is telling 15 states it won’t reimburse them for enforcing protections based on sexual orientation, gender identity, or housing voucher status. Those states are suing. HUD’s response has been to call this “restoring sanity” — the same word authoritarians always use when they mean restoring hierarchy. You don’t gut disparate impact liability because you care about fairness. You gut it because the data kept proving you wrong, and you got tired of losing.