This week President Biden signed four executive actions intended to address racial inequities — an issue he promised to make a priority of his presidency. These executive actions cover a broad range of issues, and AAF’s Director of Human Welfare Policy Tara O’Neill Hayes provides a brief overview of each.

These include:

• A memorandum on federal housing policy restores more stringent requirements intended to protect individuals from housing discrimination; specifically, it looks to eliminate practices that hinder equitable housing access and ease the burden on individuals seeking redress for discriminatory practices;
• An executive order directs the Department of Justice to not renew any prison contracts with facilities that are privately operated, affecting only the 1.5 percent of prisoners held in privately operated federal prisons; and
• Two additional memoranda aim to strengthen relationships with tribal communities and to fight discrimination and intolerance towards Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Read the insight.