Govt can totally do that. but you are right in that only congress can do that via legislation. every policy that effects poor has racially disparate impact so that argument can rally be applied anywhere.

There are many things that the government doesn't guarantee loans for. Why is not-guaranteeing for higher education more of a racially disparate action than not-guaranteeing for e.g. vehicle loans?

The government actually can do, and often does, policy with racially disparate impacts. Disparate impact is not a Constitutional limit on government discrimination, its a judicially-created rule in the application of certain statutory anti-discrimination laws.

(And the disparate impact rule is politically and legally unpopular with the same faction that currently dominates the Supreme Court and whose members on the Court have shown an unusual willingness to discard precedent, so its quite likely it won’t be a limit on discriminatiom under those statutes much longer, either.)

I didn’t say it’s a constitutional issue. It’s a political non-starter.

> I didn’t say it’s a constitutional issue. It’s a political non-starter

And I said your argument for that is nonsense, since the government does lots that has racially disparate impacts.

The disparate impact rule is challenging to begin with because literally every policy has a disparate impact, because there is and always will be an uneven distribution of people of whatever cultural or ethnic subgroup they can be divided into in whatever social roles that exist. It should rightly be rid of. There are many other better ways to address discrimination.

> The disparate impact rule is challenging to begin with because literally every policy has a disparate impact

“Disparate impact” prohibited by the rule isn't just unequal impact, its unequal impact without sufficient justification (what qualifies for that differs between the employment and housing contexts where the rule is applied.)