WALTER OLSON: DOJ: school discipline must follow disparate-impact standards.

The letter represents the culmination of a years-long drive toward imposing tighter Washington oversight on school discipline policies that result in “disparate impact” among racial or other groups. Policies that result in the suspension of differentially more minority kids, or special-ed kids, will now be suspect—even if the rate of underlying behavior is not in fact uniform among every group. . . .

In 2012 Senate testimony, Andrew Coulson noted: . . . Zero-tolerance policies were adopted in the first place in part as a way for administrators to try to defend themselves against disparate-impact charges. In other words, the new supposed remedy (disparate-impact scrutiny) helped cause the disease to which it is being promoted as the cure.