Federal authorities are moving to drop a racial discrimination lawsuit against the Sheetz convenience store chain, part of a broader effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to halt the use of a key tool for enforcing the country’s civil rights laws.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces workplace anti-discrimination laws, confirmed it has begun notifying potential claimants of its intention to drop the Sheetz lawsuit, citing Trump’s executive order directing federal agencies to deprioritize the use of “disparate impact liability” in civil rights enforcement.

Disparate impact liability holds that policies that are neutral on their face can violate civil rights laws if they impose artificial barriers that disadvantage different demographic groups. The concept has been used to root out practices that close off minorities, women, people with disabilities, older adults or other groups from certain jobs, or keep them from accessing credit or equal pay.

Trump’s executive order is part of his campaign to upend civil rights enforcement through firings and other steps that have consolidated his power over quasi-independent agencies like the EEOC, redirecting them to implement his priorities, including stamping out diversity and inclusion practices and eroding the rights of transgender people.

In the Sheetz case, filed in April 2024 under the Biden administration, the EEOC had claimed that the company’s policy of refusing to hire anyone who failed its criminal background checks discriminated against Black, Native American and multiracial job applicants.

The lawsuit could survive even if the EEOC drops it: The law firm Outten & Golden, which represents workers in employment disputes, and the Public Interest Law Center, filed a motion Thursday to intervene and pursue its own class action lawsuit on behalf of one of the potential claimants.

The Supreme Court recognized the concept of disparate impact in a landmark 1971 case, which held that a North Carolina power plant discriminated against Black employees by requiring high school diplomas and an intelligence test for certain higher paying roles, even though the requirements were irrelevant to the jobs.

In 1991, bipartisan majorities in Congress voted to codify disparate impact in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. The concept holds that it is illegal to impose barriers to employment if such practices have a discriminatory effect and have no relevance to the requirements of the job.

The April 23 order declared that it is “the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible.” The order argued that disparate impact has become a “key tool” of a “pernicious movement” that threatens meritocracy in favor of “racial balancing” in the workforce.