At the Supreme Court, small decisions sometimes speak volumes. Although the holding is relatively narrow, it provides a broad window into the politics of law in and around the high court.
Disparate impact is a circumstantial method of proving discrimination.
Say, for example, a city adopts a regulation requiring that all janitors have high school diplomas. On the surface, the regulation does not discriminate. The disparate impact approach to discrimination has long been a conservative bete noir. The liberal rejoinder to such arguments is straightforward. Bigotry is better hidden than it used to be and, thus, proving discriminatory intent is often impossible.