As the first congenitally blind member of Congress and a former president of the Bay area Rapid Transit (Bart) Board, I know that the ability to move – to get to work, to school, to the doctor – is a freedom our nation’s civil rights laws have long promised to protect. Last month, the Trump administration derailed that promise.

Through a regulatory maneuver designed to evade public scrutiny, the Department of Transportation announced it will no longer hold transportation agencies accountable when their decisions produce discriminatory outcomes – no matter how severe – so long as the discrimination was unintentional. As a result, decades of civil rights protection were erased by regulatory fiat.

The consequences are far-reaching. The Department of Transportation touches the daily lives of millions of Americans, overseeing highways, transit and aviation, and channeling billions in taxpayer dollars into infrastructure across the country. Until last month, those dollars came with a condition: projects had to be reviewed for basic fairness, and agencies could be held accountable if their decisions caused significant harm along racial lines without a proper justification. That condition is now gone.

What did that protection look like in practice? In 2009, Oakland residents – represented by lawyers from Public Advocates – petitioned the Federal Transit Administration to investigate Bart over a 3.2-mile extension to the Oakland international airport. The project........

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