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Created to refinance home mortgages during the Great Depression and produced residential security maps that contributed to redlining practices.

A later federal anti-lynching bill was introduced but failed to become law after strong Senate resistance.

Established the Federal Housing Administration to insure mortgages and expand homeownership.

Established workers’ rights to unionize and bargain collectively.

Created federal old-age insurance, unemployment insurance, and public assistance programs, but initially excluded many occupations in which Black workers were concentrated, including large portions of agricultural and domestic labor.

The House passed Representative Joseph Gavagan's anti-lynching bill in 1937, but Senate filibusters and failed cloture efforts prevented it from becoming law.

Created the United States Housing Authority and provided federal support for low-income housing and slum clearance, but administration through local authorities often reproduced segregation and unequal access.

Established minimum wage, overtime pay, and child labor protections.

Prohibited racial discrimination in the national defense industry and established the Fair Employment Practice Committee.

Provided education and housing benefits to returning veterans.

Authorized federal grants and loans for hospital construction and modernization through state plans, greatly expanding hospital infrastructure while permitting segregated implementation in many parts of the country.

Ordered equality of treatment and opportunity in the armed services and began the formal desegregation of the military.

Funded urban redevelopment and public housing expansion.

Established the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and used the phrase 'affirmative action' in the federal contracting context to require proactive nondiscrimination efforts by government contractors.

Directed executive departments and agencies to prevent discrimination in federally assisted housing and created a federal administrative framework for equal opportunity in housing before the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Prohibited poll taxes in federal elections.

Banned discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and federally funded programs.

Made the federal Food Stamp Program permanent, using nutrition assistance as a nationwide anti-poverty tool for households with low income.

Required federal contractors and subcontractors to refrain from employment discrimination and authorized the Secretary of Labor to administer and enforce equal employment opportunity obligations in federal contracting.

Expanded federal funding for colleges and financial aid programs.

Created Medicare and Medicaid while expanding older-age and public assistance programs, making federal health coverage a permanent pillar of the welfare state.

Prohibited racial discrimination in voting and targeted discriminatory barriers like literacy tests.

Extended education, training, loan, and readjustment benefits to a new generation of veterans, including many who served during the Vietnam era.

Prohibited housing discrimination based on race and other protected categories.

Assigned the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a coordinating leadership role over federal equal-employment programs and enforcement across agencies.

Would have established a federal commission to examine slavery, post-emancipation discrimination, and the continuing effects of those systems, and to recommend remedies including apology and compensation.

Expanded voter registration through motor vehicle agencies and public assistance offices.

Expanded policing, prisons, and sentencing laws across the United States.

Large federal crime law that expanded policing, prisons, and sentencing measures while also including provisions like the Violence Against Women Act.

Overhauled welfare programs and imposed work requirements and time limits on benefits.

Restricted the ability of prisoners to file lawsuits regarding prison conditions.

Overhauled eligibility rules for the VA health system, broadened access to medical services, and expanded attention to women veterans, mental health, and counseling.

Reauthorized and expanded CHIP, increasing federal support for child coverage, outreach, enrollment, and optional coverage of low-income pregnant women.

Expanded access to health insurance through subsidies, exchanges, and Medicaid expansion options.

Implemented financial regulations and created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Reduced sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

Reduced the federal sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine offenses.

Established a federal evidence-based home visiting program for pregnant women and families with young children in communities facing greater barriers and health risks.

Expanded Medicaid, created insurance marketplaces, prohibited many coverage denials, and widened subsidized access to health insurance.

Replaced No Child Left Behind and returned more control to states.

HUD issued a final rule to give jurisdictions receiving HUD funds clearer planning obligations, data tools, and procedures for meeting the Fair Housing Act's requirement to affirmatively further fair housing.

Would have established a specific federal criminal civil-rights violation for lynching, reviving a reform Congress had failed to enact for more than a century.

Would have imposed federal policing standards and expanded accountability measures on issues including use of force, chokeholds, no-knock warrants, data collection, and officer misconduct.

Pandemic relief law that included the expanded Child Tax Credit, direct payments, and other anti-poverty measures.

Appropriated funding for USDA to pay certain outstanding direct and guaranteed farm loan balances for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers as a response to the cumulative effects of discriminatory lending and program administration.

Would have eliminated the qualified immunity defense in civil rights actions, making it easier to hold state actors personally liable for constitutional violations.

Directed federal agencies to assess whether programs and policies perpetuated systemic barriers for underserved communities.

A proposed federal voting-rights and election-administration bill designed to expand ballot access, limit partisan gerrymandering, and strengthen election protections.

Proposed legislation to reform policing practices, accountability standards, and use-of-force rules.

Created a USDA lending framework to help producers and landowners resolve heirs' property title problems that often prevent access to federal agricultural programs and make Black-owned family land vulnerable to partition sales and loss.

Proposed legislation to restore and modernize Voting Rights Act preclearance protections after Shelby County v. Holder.

Would have restored and modernized key Voting Rights Act preclearance and anti-discrimination protections weakened by Shelby County v. Holder and subsequent voting-rights litigation.

Would have prohibited discrimination based on hair texture or hairstyles commonly associated with race across employment, housing, public accommodations, and federally assisted programs.

Expanded eligibility for VA healthcare and disability benefits related to toxic exposures, including burn pits, Agent Orange-related conditions, and other service-connected harms.

Would establish a federal commission to study slavery, subsequent racial discrimination, and the continuing effects of those systems, and to recommend remedies including reparative measures.

Would have addressed USDA discrimination against Black farmers through debt relief, land-retention and land-grant support, civil-rights reforms, and equity-focused agricultural investment.

The Supreme Court narrowly interpreted the Privileges or Immunities Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, sharply limiting its usefulness as a federal protection against state-level rights violations.

The Supreme Court overturned federal convictions tied to the Colfax Massacre and sharply limited federal power to protect Black citizens from private racial violence and state-level rights violations.

The Supreme Court struck down the Civil Rights Act of 1875, ruling that Congress could not prohibit racial discrimination by private individuals or businesses.

The Supreme Court upheld racial segregation under the separate but equal doctrine.

The Supreme Court upheld Mississippi's poll tax, literacy test, and related voter qualification scheme because the law did not explicitly name race on its face, even though it was designed and administered to disfranchise Black voters.

The Supreme Court refused to grant meaningful relief to Black plaintiffs challenging Alabama's disfranchising constitution, effectively declining to use federal judicial power to restore their voting rights.

The Supreme Court struck down grandfather clauses that were used to block Black Americans from voting.

The Supreme Court struck down a Louisville residential segregation ordinance that barred Black people from buying property on majority-white blocks and white people from buying property on majority-Black blocks.

The Supreme Court struck down a Texas statute that explicitly barred Black citizens from voting in Democratic primary elections.

The Supreme Court upheld the exclusion of Black voters from a Texas Democratic primary by treating the party's action as private rather than state action.

The Supreme Court ruled that states providing a law school for white students had to provide a genuinely equal legal education for Black students within the state.

The Supreme Court struck down Oklahoma's replacement voter registration scheme because it preserved advantages for voters previously protected by a grandfather clause while imposing restrictive, short registration windows on Black citizens excluded under Jim Crow.

The Supreme Court ruled that white-only primary elections were unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court ruled that racially restrictive housing covenants could not be enforced by courts.

Supreme Court decision holding that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional.

A federal court ruled that racial segregation on public buses in Alabama was unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Supreme Court ruled that laws banning interracial marriage were unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court held that Congress could prohibit private racial discrimination in the sale or rental of property under 42 U.S.C. § 1982 and the Thirteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court ordered Southern school districts to end delays and transition immediately from dual school systems to unitary systems.

Expanded the scope of the Voting Rights Act to cover more types of voting changes.

The Supreme Court held that Title VII prohibits employment practices that are facially neutral but have a discriminatory impact unless the employer can show business necessity.

The Supreme Court approved broad equitable remedies, including busing and redrawn attendance zones, to dismantle de jure school segregation.

The Supreme Court limited interdistrict desegregation remedies by ruling that suburban districts could not be included in a metropolitan desegregation plan absent proof that they had contributed to the constitutional violation.

The law directed federal banking regulators to encourage insured depository institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities they serve, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, consistent with safe and sound operations.

The Supreme Court struck down a rigid admissions quota while also allowing race to be considered as one factor among many in higher education admissions.

The Supreme Court rejected an equal-protection and Eighth Amendment challenge to Georgia's death penalty despite statistical evidence of racial disparities, requiring proof of intentional discrimination in the individual case.

The law restored broad institution-wide coverage for Title VI, Title IX, Section 504, and the Age Discrimination Act after narrower Supreme Court interpretations had limited their reach.

The law expanded the Fair Housing Act's protected classes and strengthened federal enforcement mechanisms and remedies for housing discrimination.

Black farmers sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture over decades of racial discrimination in farm credit and benefit programs and the government's failure to process civil-rights complaints fairly.

The Supreme Court upheld the University of Michigan Law School's limited use of race as one factor in a holistic admissions process.

The Supreme Court struck down certain voluntary K-12 student assignment plans that used individual racial classifications to promote school integration.

Supreme Court decision that invalidated the coverage formula used for federal preclearance under the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court held that disparate-impact claims are cognizable under the Fair Housing Act, preserving an important tool for challenging facially neutral housing policies with discriminatory effects.

The Supreme Court upheld Arizona voting restrictions and adopted a narrower interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Supreme Court held that the race-conscious admissions programs challenged at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated constitutional and statutory equal-protection rules, sharply restricting affirmative action in higher education.

Declared enslaved people in Confederate-held territory to be free, shifting the war toward abolition.

Abolished slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crime.

Established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands in the War Department to provide relief, labor oversight, schooling support, legal assistance, and family reunification support for formerly enslaved people and war refugees.

Declared all persons born in the United States to be citizens and guaranteed basic civil rights regardless of race.

Expanded federal support for formerly enslaved people through education, labor assistance, legal aid, and relief services.

Divided most former Confederate states into military districts and required new constitutions, ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, and Black male suffrage as conditions for readmission to the Union.

Placed former Confederate states under military administration and required new state constitutions and Black male suffrage for readmission.

Guaranteed birthright citizenship, due process, and equal protection under the law.

Prohibited denial of the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude.

Protected voting rights of Black Americans and enforced the 15th Amendment.

Series of laws aimed at protecting Black voting rights and suppressing white supremacist violence and intimidation.

Expanded federal oversight of elections and enforcement powers against voter suppression.

Authorized federal intervention against conspiracies that deprived citizens of civil and voting rights, especially Klan violence.

Attempted to guarantee equal treatment in public accommodations and jury service regardless of race.

Representative George Henry White introduced the first federal anti-lynching bill to protect citizens against mob violence, but the measure never made it out of committee.

A federal anti-lynching bill passed the House but was blocked in the Senate after fierce opposition.

Launched the modern interstate highway system and accelerated massive federally backed road construction through cities and metropolitan regions across the United States.

Created the Civil Rights Division in the Justice Department and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, with limited voting-rights enforcement provisions.

Strengthened federal inspection of voter registration records and penalties for obstructing court orders involving school desegregation.

Established federal standards for relocation payments and assistance for people displaced by federal and federally assisted projects, including displaced homeowners, tenants, businesses, and farms.

Strengthened Title VII enforcement by giving the EEOC litigation authority, expanding coverage to state and local governments and educational institutions, and extending protections in public employment.

Prohibited discrimination in credit transactions based on race, sex, and other factors.

Created the Community Development Block Grant program and the Section 8 housing assistance framework while restructuring federal urban-development policy.

Required lenders to disclose mortgage data to identify discriminatory practices.

Federal anti-drug law that established harsh mandatory minimum sentences, including the 100-to-1 crack versus powder cocaine sentencing disparity.

Required Medicare-participating hospitals with emergency departments to provide screening and stabilizing treatment for emergency medical conditions, including active labor, regardless of ability to pay.

Expanded the federal drug war framework, created the Office of National Drug Control Policy, and intensified criminal penalties tied to drug enforcement.

Strengthened civil rights protections in employment and allowed for jury trials and damages in discrimination cases.

Created a federal maternal and infant health initiative focused on communities with exceptionally high infant mortality and poor maternal health outcomes.

Would have protected Pigford settlement recipients from tax liability and the loss of means-tested federal benefits triggered by settlement payments arising from USDA discrimination claims.

Expanded federal oversight of education and standardized testing requirements.

Reauthorized major provisions of the Voting Rights Act with bipartisan support.

Created a major modern package of education and housing-related benefits for veterans who served after September 10, 2001, covering tuition, housing, books, and training support.

Updated and expanded GI Bill benefits, including changes affecting housing, school closures, reserve eligibility, and the elimination of benefit expiration for many Post-9/11 GI Bill users.

Bipartisan criminal justice reform law that reduced some federal sentencing disparities and expanded earned-time credits.

Permanently funded mandatory federal support for HBCUs and other minority-serving institutions.

HUD terminated the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing regulation, ending the structured Assessment of Fair Housing framework that had required localities and housing agencies to use data and planning tools tied to segregation and opportunity gaps.