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Advocates behind a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center say it’s the first suit of its kind nationally to challenge the federal government’s rollback of an anti-discrimination rule at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Lawyers for Civil Rights announced the lawsuit Monday, saying the federal agency’s new rule “effectively guts disparate impact discrimination” protections under the Fair Housing Act, a tool used to challenge exclusionary zoning ordinances and screening policies that deny housing to tenants of color.

“The Supreme Court has spoken: disparate impact is a vital and necessary part of the Fair Housing Act,” Scott Lewis, partner at Anderson & Kreiger, said in a statement accompanying news of the lawsuit. “The new rule is breathtaking in its unlawfulness, disregarding decades of precedent to impose unnecessary burdens on victims of housing and lending discrimination that have no place in our law. We call upon the federal court to enjoin the rule immediately.”

The White House in late July said its new rule would repeal the Obama administration’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, promoting the measure as a “saving our suburbs” initiative that would restore local zoning decision-making and end “the federal encroachment on local communities.”

The plaintiffs claim that HUD has violated the Administrative Procedure Act, by imposing new burdens on victims of housing and lending discrimination and by creating legal defenses for those who are alleged to have discriminated.

“For over thirty years, we have spent countless hours and dollars fighting to end housing discrimination in Western and Central Massachusetts,” said Meris Bergquist, executive director at the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center. “HUD’s new rule flagrantly violates the letter and spirit of the Fair Housing Act and upends decades of legal precedent. This rule is misguided and cannot stand.”