US Highway Program’s Use of Race, Gender in Contracting Is Unlawful, Judge Says

A U.S. judge ruled that the U.S. Department of Transportation’s consideration of race or gender when awarding billions of dollars in federal highway and transit project funding set aside for disadvantaged small businesses is unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove in Frankfort, Kentucky, on Monday ruled, opens new tab that a federal program enacted in 1983 that treats businesses owned by racial minorities and women as presumptively disadvantaged and eligible for such funding violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.

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But Van Tatenhove, an appointee of Republican former President George W. Bush, said the federal government cannot classify people in ways that violate the principles of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution.

He relied in part on a ruling last year by the U.S. Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. The ruling effectively prohibited affirmative action policies long used in college admissions to raise the number of Black, Hispanic and other underrepresented minority students on American campuses.

The judge blocked the Transportation Department from relying on race or gender when considering contracts bid for by two companies that sued last year over the policy, Mid-America Milling Company and Bagshaw Trucking, which operate within Kentucky and Indiana.

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