HHS Restores Title VI’s Promise of Equal Protection for All

WASHINGTON — [July 23, 2026] — Today, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office for Civil Rights (OCR), announced a final rule updating its regulations implementing Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to end disparate-impact liability. The rule returns HHS enforcement to Title VI’s statutory command: no person may be excluded from participation in, denied benefits, or subjected to intentional discrimination under an HHS-funded program based on race, color, or national origin.

The rule also aligns HHS’s regulations with longstanding Supreme Court precedent, the U.S. Department of Justice’s recent Title VI rulemaking, and Executive Order 14281, Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy.

HHS determined that the effects-based provisions in its current Title VI regulations go beyond the statute’s prohibition of intentional discrimination, and that those provisions created incentives for recipients to engage in racial balancing or meritless, race-based decision-making to reduce perceived enforcement risk.

“Civil rights laws protect Americans as individuals,” said Paula M. Stannard, Director of HHS OCR. “HHS will not pressure doctors, hospitals, universities, or state agencies to sort people by race to satisfy a statistic. This rule restores common sense and true equality to Title VI enforcement.”

OCR will continue to investigate complaints, conduct compliance reviews, seek voluntary resolutions where appropriate, and take enforcement action to combat intentional race, color-, and national-origin-based discrimination. OCR will also consider statistical disparities, along with other evidence, to evaluate whether intentional discrimination occurred.

To further clarify HHS’s operational civil rights framework and reduce confusion for recipients, HHS separately published a final rule rescinding Appendix B to 45 C.F.R. Part 80 and removing related cross-references in 45 C.F.R. Parts 84 and 86. Appendix B contained legacy vocational education guidelines issued by the former Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) in 1979. HHS has not used these guidelines as an active compliance framework since HEW split into HHS and the U.S. Department of Education in 1980. The Appendix B action removes obsolete material from the C.F.R. and leaves in place HHS’s operative nondiscrimination regulations and enforcement authorities under Title VI, Title IX of the Education Amendments, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The final Title VI rule and Appendix B rescission are effective immediately and available at here and here, respectively.

If you believe that you or someone else has been discriminated against because of race, color, national origin, disability, age, sex, or religion in programs or activities that HHS directly operates or to which HHS provides federal financial assistance, you may file a complaint with the HHS Office for Civil Rights here.