The results are in, and on November 5, Americans officially rejected the high prices and spiraling costs that have defined much of the Biden-Harris administration — including the least affordable housing market in US history.

Instead of being punished for the national attacks he, his vice president and his party have received, President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice is pursuing a bold move that could throw the housing market into disarray and put home ownership even further out of reach for middle-class Americans.

In a landmark lawsuit filed last month, the DOJ is trying to crack down on a case of alleged home appraisal bias in Colorado, but the lawsuit could set up a a worrying new precedent for the relationship between mortgagees and appraisers. The consequences could be major and weigh heaviest on the black homeowners and aspiring homeowners whom the DOJ is ironically trying to protect through this lawsuit.

The DOJ alleges that an appraiser, Maksym Mykhailyna, undervalued a black woman’s home in Denver while she was applying for a refinance. Undervaluation results in a higher interest rate and a smaller loan amount.

The Biden administration did collapse on this type of alleged discrimination a focus, and Vice President Kamala Harris has led the White House efforts. However, the DOJ case hardly proves that the appraiser undervalued the home. Even more important, the DOJ fails to show that unlawful racial bias skewed the appraisal results or that this single incident is indicative of systemic discrimination that permeates the appraisal industry.

These crackdowns on an illusory issue were repeatedly and correctly criticized. The administration is fundamentally trying to expand the federal government’s role in housing with little understanding about how meddling in the appraisal process would ultimately affect home prices and homebuyers.

The DOJ process and many of the Biden administration’s efforts on this issue are flawed. In this latest effort, the Department of Justice goes beyond holding an allegedly biased appraiser accountable. Along with Mykhailyna, the DOJ also names Rocket Mortgage, the lender with which the homeowner sought a refinance, as a co-defendant.

The DOJ’s decision to prosecute the mortgage lender for an appraiser’s actions in this case not only runs afoul of federal law, but also risks reversing years of real estate reforms that have kept home prices in check.

Setting a precedent to hold lenders accountable for the actions of independent appraisers would reintroduce the conflicts of interest that helped inflate housing prices and create a housing bubble in the run-up to the 2008 financial crisis. A repeat of these circumstances would make homes even more expensive and would put home ownership even further out of reach for many Americans.

Passed in the wake of the 2008 crisis, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act explicitly prohibits mortgage lenders from influencing appraisers. Legislation established independence of the evaluator by mandating that creditors order appraisals through third party companies called appraisal management companies. These companies represent a critical degree of separation between lenders and appraisers that protects the real estate industry from the conflicts of interest that led to the 2008 disaster. The DOJ’s efforts to punish the lender in the Colorado lawsuit threatens to erode appraisers’ independence.

Before 2008, there were no valuation management companies, and valuers did exist strongly dependent on the mortgage lenders who assigned them the work. That conflict of interest it caused appraisers to overvalue homes to authorize larger, more profitable loans for mortgage lenders. This fueled the market bubble that eventually popped, destroying the global economy, nearly bringing down the entire financial sector, and setting many American families back years.

If the Biden DOJ gets his way, the US could return to the pre-2008 real estate industry. The potential for baseless lawsuits alleging undervaluation will incentivize both appraisers and lenders to overvalue properties – fueling even more home price inflation and injecting more risk into the system.

Housing costs are already out of control. Minority communities in this country are disproportionately locked out of home ownership. Instead of pursuing frivolous titles for baseless lawsuits that would ultimately hurt Americans and further exacerbate prices, the government should reduce the footprint of government-sponsored enterprises—namely, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—that have contributed to the creation of a second real estate bubble in the last 20 years.

The bottom line is that the DOJ’s misguided efforts here could hurt all aspiring homeowners, including the very people of color the Biden administration says it’s trying to support.

Existing civil rights laws already protect homeowners against racially biased assessment practices. These laws should continue to be enforced. Regulators or legislators could task rating management companies to keep a closer eye on raters and potential trends in their work. But the effort to burden mortgage lenders with the responsibility of addressing appraisal discrimination is not only misguided, it is deeply harmful to aspiring homeowners, the real estate industry, and the financial industry.

The new Trump administration should immediately audit the delayed housing reforms of the Biden administration and stop this process before it causes damage to the system. Wake up, affirmative action policies are wrong and end up hurting everyone. Voters want a return to simple, logic-based politics, and this is one area to start with.

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