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Attorney General Jeff Sessions, pictured on May 9 in Washington, is in an excellent position to walk back the Obama administrations efforts to protect minorities.

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Shortly before the 2016 election, I wrote an article describing how President Barack Obama had managed to implement his civil rights agenda with little helpand, at times, much resistancefrom Congress. Obama, I explained, had seized upon federal agencies authority to interpret civil rights law, expanding protections for minorities by construing existing statutes as broadly as possible. I argued that the result was a legacy of equality and inclusion shielded by administrative safeguards that would endure well beyond Obamas tenure.

Mark Joseph Stern is a writer for Slate. He covers the law and LGBTQ issues.

Seven months later, it seems safe to say that I was very wrong.

On Monday, the Washington Post published a piece reviewing the Trump administrations efforts to roll back the civil rights protections crafted by executive agencies during the Obama era. For liberals, this is not good news. Trumps appointees have made quick work of the regulations crafted by the previous regime, disposing of rules and guidance designed to help women, minorities, the poor, and LGBTQ people. Obamas congressional achievements may prove durable, but the agency rules that lay at the heart of his progressive agenda are quickly disappearing in a bureaucratic fog, with LGBTQ protections proving especially vulnerable.

Federal agencies are charged with interpreting and implementing laws passed by Congress. They can promulgate two types of regulations: rules, which are binding regulations with the full force of law, and guidance, which interpret rules and are not binding. Rules must go through a public notice-and-comment period; guidance does not. To revoke a rule, an agency must once again undertake the notice-and-comment process, allowing opponents to intervene, protest, or sue. (Congress can also overturn recently finalized rules.) To revoke guidance, an agency need only issue a memo declaring the guidance to be null.

Many federal laws outlaw sex discrimination, and the courts increasingly understand that prohibition to include sex stereotyping against LGBTQ people. Obamas agencies followed suit. His administrations most famous transgender protection, forbidding schools from discriminating against trans students, was derived from Title IXs celebrated bar on discrimination because of sex. But this directive was issued as guidance by the departments of Education and Justice, interpreting an older rule regarding Title IX. As a result, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos were able to withdraw the guidance in February, immediately leaving trans schoolchildren across the country unprotected.

The Trump era has laid bare the peril of protecting civil rights through executive orders and agency rule-making.

Some of Obamas less controversial protections were also issued as guidance: A regulation proscribing anti-LGBTQ discrimination in credit, for instance, was handed down in the form of a letter, rendering it susceptible to sudden withdrawal. Other protections took the form of legally binding rules, making them more difficult, though not impossible, to reverse. To take one example, Sessions Justice Department has indicated that the Department of Health and Human Services is planning to repeal a rule interpreting the Affordable Care Act to prohibit discrimination against trans and gender-nonconforming people. (HHS has already stopped gathering data on LGBTQ elders.) Ben Carsons Department of Housing and Urban Development is also laying the groundwork to rescind a rule allowing trans people without a home to stay at the sex-segregated shelter that corresponds to their gender identity. And, with Trumps approval, congressional Republicans used an arcane law to reverse a rule barring states from defunding Planned Parenthood.

Sessions in particular is in an excellent position to walk back the Obama administrations efforts to protect minorities. The attorney general is currently reviewing consent decrees with discriminatory police departments, a process that will likely end with looser federal oversight of law enforcement abuse. He has also switched the DOJs position on voter suppression laws, urging a federal court to dismiss litigation against Texas draconian voter ID measure. And just this month, Sessions overturned an Obama-era policy designed to minimize the infliction of mandatory minimums upon drug offenders. Sessions new policy, which directs prosecutors to pursue the maximum possible penalties, is certain to have a disproportionate impact on racial minorities.

The easiest way for the Trump administration to block civil rights protections, however, is to defund the program for enforcing them. Trumps proposed budget would do exactly that to the Environmental Protection Agencys environmental justice program, which is tasked with identifying and alleviating pollution that disproportionately affects minority communities. Under Obama, the project flourished: His EPA developed sophisticated tools to measure the correlation between pollution and socioeconomic factors, helping the government protect low-income individuals from health hazards. But in March, the programs leader resigned, citing Trumps efforts to sabotage his projects, and now it seems destined for the chopping block.

Trump also plans to break up the Labor Departments Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, which prevents federal contractors from engaging in discrimination. With the help of Congress, he has already repealed an executive order requiring contractors to provide documentation proving compliance with nondiscrimination law. And with nearly every federal agency now led by Trump-allied conservatives, the administration can simply stop enforcing a slew of civil rights rules designed to help minorities and the poor.

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This rapid backsliding does not prove Obama was foolish to rely upon agencies to carry out his civil rights agenda: Given congressional Republicans intransigence, agencies provided him with his only tool to bend the law toward justice. And some of Obamas accomplishments did run through Congress, including the expansion of the Violence Against Women Act and federal hate crimes laws to cover LGBTQ people, as well as the repeal of Dont Ask, Dont Tell. These are lasting triumphs.

But the flurry of executive action that defined Obamas second termhis famous use of a pen and a phone to work around Congressis much less resilient to attack. The Trump era has laid bare the peril of protecting civil rights through executive orders, agency rule-making, and memoranda. The resulting reforms may be great while they last. But theres no guarantee that theyll last much longer than the administration that created them in the first place.

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How the Trump Administration Is Dismantling Obama's Civil Rights Legacy - Slate Magazine