The Justice Department announced it will stop investigating claims of systemic racism or sexism under disparate-impact legal theory, formally narrowing civil-rights enforcement in higher education. The rule removes a decades-old path that allowed students, faculty and staff to challenge race- or sex-neutral policies that produced unequal outcomes. Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the civil-rights division, framed the shift as restoring ‘‘true equality under the law” by requiring proof of intent. Colleges and university lawyers will face an immediate shift in defense strategy: statistical evidence of disparate outcomes will no longer suffice for DOJ probes. Campus compliance teams that relied on disparate-impact frameworks to justify program and hiring reforms must now prepare for a case-by-case burden of proving intentional discrimination. Civil-rights advocates warned the change narrows remedies for groups facing systemic harms and could complicate institutional responses to long‑standing inequities. Administrators should expect new patterns in complaints and enforcement: fewer broad investigations based on outcome disparities and more demand for documentary proof of intentional actions. Institutions dependent on objective metrics to evaluate equity—admissions, hiring, student outcomes—will need to reassess both policy design and legal exposure under the revised DOJ posture.