An example of Disparate Impact?

Policy analysis would have  to make sure.

From the Texas Tribune: The devastating toll of COVID-19 on El Paso illustrates the pandemic’s stark inequalities.

A border town, it has been ground zero for asylum seekers from Central America who are in the Migrant Protection Protocols, a program that has forced many asylum seekers and Cubans to wait just across the border from the city for their immigration hearings in American courts. A migrant detention center in El Paso County also drew repeated protests and became a focal point for critics of the Trump administration’s border policies.

And now the coronavirus is devastating the city, its alarming spread a sign of the outbreak’s inequitable impact on Texans. In the nine months that the virus has been confirmed to be in the state, it has ravaged communities of color. Hispanic Texans make up about 40% of the state’s population and accounted for 55% of its known COVID-19 fatalities as of Nov. 13.

El Paso County has reported over 16,000 new cases in the last two weeks — thousands more than the numbers reported for the much larger counties home to Dallas, Houston and Fort Worth. Across the county, more than 900 residents have died of COVID since the pandemic began, placing El Paso far ahead of the state’s other major urban counties in deaths per 1,000 residents.

El Paso is far from the only predominantly Hispanic area that has been hit hard by the virus. Hidalgo and Cameron counties, both along the state’s southern border, have seen death tolls that rival larger and more urban parts of the state like Dallas and San Antonio.

Residents and community leaders say they’re shaken by the number of people who have fallen ill. They have pleaded for help but have been frustrated by the response so far.

“El Paso isn’t a rich city,” Jiminez said. “We aren’t Dallas, Austin, Houston or San Antonio. We’re like the redheaded stepchild of Texas.”