Real Safety AI Foundation / Research

Policy, Enforcement, and Implementation

Unreachable Heights: Desuetude, Selective Enforcement, and an Arlington Heights Record of Purposeful Discrimination, 1886 to 2026

Publisher: Real Safety AI Foundation

Working paper. Not peer reviewed.

Written
August 2026
Version
v1
Pages
31
Download PDFPlain language slides (PDF)Export BibTeXExport RIS

Abstract

American law has recognized since 1886 that a statute fair on its face may be administered with an evil eye and an unequal hand, and that unequal administration is itself a constitutional violation. That recognition has never been withdrawn. In 1967 a federal district court connected selective enforcement to the Yick Wo doctrine and to the desuetude literature, then dismissed the claim because the defendant had adduced not a scintilla of evidence that the government singled him out. The recognition and the proof problem were both on the record before anything that followed was built. What followed is this Article's subject. Washington v.\ Davis, Feeney, McCleskey, Armstrong, Sandoval, Iqbal, and Dukes each rest on separate ground. Together they make intent an element, place awareness of consequences outside it, disqualify aggregate proof, condition discovery on evidence only discovery can produce, close the route requiring no intent at all, and bar aggregation. Inclusive Communities preserved the surviving private route in 2015 and fitted it with the same instruments. Desuetude, which would have kept dormant rules from remaining available for selective revival, was declined. The Article does not present that sequence as an indictment. It assembles it as an Arlington Heights record, drawn from the Court's own published rationales, and runs the framework against it. The record fails, because Feeney places awareness of consequences outside the definition of purpose. The architecture is self-immunizing, and the showing is by construction rather than by assertion. Two claims follow. A standard provable only from the decisionmaker's own record measures documentation, not purpose. And because reaching internal records requires counsel, time, and the capacity to absorb delay, the remedy is rationed along the same axis as the injury. Five literatures document that pattern independently.

Keywords

  • civil rights
  • constitutional law
  • proof architecture
  • unreachable remedy
  • discriminatory intent
  • disparate impact
  • burden of proof
  • plausibility pleading
  • Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney
  • access to justice
  • disability rights
  • civil procedure

Plain language slides

First slide of the plain language summary of Unreachable Heights: Desuetude, Selective Enforcement, and an Arlington Heights Record of Purposeful Discrimination, 1886 to 2026Open the 26-slide summary (PDF)

Suggested citation

Gilly, Travis. "Unreachable Heights: Desuetude, Selective Enforcement, and an Arlington Heights Record of Purposeful Discrimination, 1886 to 2026." Real Safety AI Foundation Working Paper, August 2026. https://realsafetyai.org/research/rrzg67/

Other versions

This paper is also posted on SSRN.

SSRN version

References (59)

  1. Acherman, D. (2008). Discrimination by any other name: Alternatives to proving deliberate intent in environmental racism cases. FIU Law Review, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.25148/lawrev.4.1.18
  2. Alexander v. Sandoval, 532 U.S. 275 (2001).
  3. Araiza, W. D. (2012). Flunking the class of one/failing equal protection. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2175768
  4. Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662 (2009).
  5. Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986).
  6. Bickel, A. M. (1962). The least dangerous branch. Bobbs-Merrill.
  7. Bonfield, A. E. (1963). The abrogation of penal statutes by nonenforcement. Iowa Law Review, 49, 389.
  8. Blau, F. D., & Kahn, L. M. (2006). The U.S. gender pay gap in the 1990s: Slowing convergence. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.918720
  9. Brest, P. (1976). In defense of the antidiscrimination principle. Harvard Law Review, 90(1), 1.
  10. Case, M. A. (1995). Disaggregating gender from sex and sexual orientation: The effeminate man in the law and feminist jurisprudence. Yale Law Journal, 105(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.2307/797140
  11. City of Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999).
  12. Choper, J. H., & Ross, S. F. (2017). The political process, equal protection and substantive due process. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2952862
  13. City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U.S. 432 (1985).
  14. Committee on Legal Ethics of the West Virginia State Bar v. Printz, 187 W. Va. 182, 416 S.E.2d 720 (1992).
  15. Feinman, J. M. (1988). Practical legal studies and critical legal studies. Michigan Law Review, 87(3), 724. https://doi.org/10.2307/1289090
  16. Finnis, J. (1985). On “The Critical Legal Studies Movement.” American Journal of Jurisprudence, 30(1), 21–42. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajj/30.1.21
  17. Flagg, B. J. (1993). “Was blind, but now I see”: White race consciousness and the requirement of discriminatory intent. Michigan Law Review, 91(5), 953. https://doi.org/10.2307/1289678
  18. Garrett, B. L. (2018). Unconstitutionally illegitimate discrimination. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3120413
  19. Gordon, R. W. (2019). Lawyers, the legal profession & access to justice in the United States: A brief history. Daedalus, 148(1), 177–189. https://doi.org/10.1162/daed_a_00551
  20. Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965).
  21. Gregory, D. L., & Kelman, M. (1987). A guide to critical legal studies. Duke Law Journal, 1987(6), 1138. https://doi.org/10.2307/1372599
  22. Harwood, R. (2016). Can international human rights law help restore access to justice for disabled workers? Laws, 5(2), 17. https://doi.org/10.3390/laws5020017
  23. Hopwood, S. (2011). A sunny deposition: How the “in forma pauperis” statute provides an avenue for indigent prisoners to seek depositions without accompanying fees. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1799063
  24. Hunt, A. (1986). The theory of critical legal studies. Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 6(1), 1–45. https://doi.org/10.1093/ojls/6.1.1
  25. Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222 (1985).
  26. Hunter, N. D. (2004). Sexual orientation and the paradox of heightened scrutiny. Michigan Law Review, 102(7), 1528. https://doi.org/10.2307/4141913
  27. Jobe, K. S. (2022). Anti-discrimination jurisprudence: US v. Carrillo-Lopez. International Journal of Discrimination and the Law, 22(4), 404–411. https://doi.org/10.1177/13582291221124489
  28. Kolender v. Lawson, 461 U.S. 352 (1983).
  29. Lau, H. (2006).
  30. Lawrence, C. R., III. (1987). The id, the ego, and equal protection: Reckoning with unconscious racism. Stanford Law Review, 39(2), 317. https://doi.org/10.2307/1228797 Transcending the individualist paradigm in sexual orientation antidiscrimination law. California Law Review, 94(4), 1271. https://doi.org/10.2307/20439064
  31. Maučec, G. (2017). Proving unlawful discrimination in capital cases: In quest of an adequate standard of proof. Utrecht Journal of International and European Law, 33(85), 5–37. https://doi.org/10.5334/ujiel.356
  32. McCleskey v. Kemp, 481 U.S. 279 (1987).
  33. Mt. Healthy City School District Board of Education v. Doyle, 429 U.S. 274 (1977).
  34. Newell, W. (2011). An irrational oversight: Applying the PLRA’s fee restrictions to collateral prisoner litigation. CUNY Law Review, 15(1), 53. https://doi.org/10.31641/clr150104
  35. Note. (1978). Racial vote dilution in multimember districts: The constitutional standard after Washington v. Davis. Michigan Law Review, 76(4), 694. https://doi.org/10.2307/1287823
  36. Note. (1981). Quasi-suspect classes and proof of discriminatory intent: A new model. Yale Law Journal, 90(4), 912. https://doi.org/10.2307/795905
  37. Note. (1982). Making the violation fit the remedy: The intent standard and equal protection law. Yale Law Journal, 92(2), 328. https://doi.org/10.2307/796195
  38. Oliveri, R. C. (2021). Sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination claims under the Fair Housing Act after Bostock v. Clayton County. Kansas Law Review, 69. https://doi.org/10.17161/1808.31570
  39. Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972).
  40. Personnel Administrator of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256 (1979).
  41. Poe v. Ullman, 367 U.S. 497 (1961).
  42. Richardson, M., & Pittinsky, T. L. (2005). The mistaken assumption of intentionality in equal protection law: Psychological science and the interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.722647
  43. Rodgers, W. (1966). Desuetude as a defense. Iowa Law Review, 52, 1.
  44. Smith v. Goguen, 415 U.S. 566 (1974).
  45. Spencer, A. B. (2012). Class actions, heightened commonality, and declining access to justice. SSRN. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2113374
  46. Strauss, D. A. (1989). Discriminatory intent and the taming of Brown. University of Chicago Law Review, 56(3), 935. https://doi.org/10.2307/1599760
  47. Swain v. Alabama, 380 U.S. 202 (1965).
  48. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs v. Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., 576 U.S. 519 (2015).
  49. Tokaji, D. P. (2003). First Amendment equal protection: On discretion, inequality, and participation. Michigan Law Review, 101(7), 2409. https://doi.org/10.2307/3595360
  50. Tushnet, M. (1991). Critical legal studies: A political history. Yale Law Journal, 100(5), 1515. https://doi.org/10.2307/796697
  51. Unger, R. M. (1983). The critical legal studies movement. Harvard Law Review, 96(3), 561. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341032
  52. United States v. Armstrong, 517 U.S. 456 (1996).
  53. United States v. Elliott, 266 F. Supp. 318 (S.D.N.Y. 1967).
  54. Village of Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Development Corp., 429 U.S. 252 (1977).
  55. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. v. Dukes, 564 U.S. 338 (2011).
  56. Washington v. Davis, 426 U.S. 229 (1976).
  57. West, C. (2021). Critical legal studies and a liberal critic. In Critical legal studies (pp. 207–225). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003061472-16
  58. Yarbrough, M. V. (1986). Disparate impact, disparate treatment, and the displaced homemaker. Law and Contemporary Problems, 49(4), 107. https://doi.org/10.2307/1191652
  59. Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).

All research