Trump Administration Moves to Upend $37B Affirmative Action Program

The Trump administration moved Wednesday to dismantle one of the federal government’s largest and longest-standing affirmative action programs, siding with two White-owned contracting businesses that challenged its constitutionality.

In a motion filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, the Justice Department said that a Transportation Department program that has carved out an estimated $37 billion for minority- and women-owned businesses violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. If a judge approves the proposed settlement, the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program (DBE) will be prohibited from awarding contracts based on race and sex, effectively ending its founding mission.

“Over the past five decades, the federal government imposed a policy of race discrimination in the roadbuilding industry,” said Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, the conservative nonprofit representing the plaintiffs. {snip}

The settlement is still subject to challenge by a coalition of businesses that intervened in the case after President Donald Trump took office, arguing that the program is essential to removing entrenched barriers that minorities and women face in the $759 billion contracting sector. First authorized by Congress in 1983, the program serves roughly 49,000 businesses designated as “disadvantaged.”

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In September, U.S. District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove, a George W. Bush appointee, partially blocked the program on the grounds the plaintiffs were “likely” to succeed on their claims. {snip}

The DBE program, which is funded by the U.S. government but administered by states, earmarks at least 10 percent of the federal funding for transportation infrastructure to women- and minority-owned contracting firms.

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