$37B Effort To Award Contracts To Minority- And Women-Owned Businesses In Transportation Sector Is Being Challenged
The lifeline of a multi-billion-dollar effort to support minority- and women-owned businesses is under investigation.
Established in 1983, The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program provides $37 billion in funding to minority- and women-owned businesses, supporting nearly 49,000 “disadvantaged” businesses, The Washington Post reports. But now the Justice Department argues that this program, provided through the Department of Transportation, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
The case originated from two Indiana-based transportation companies Mid-America Milling and Bagshaw Trucking, which in 2023 alleged that they lost opportunities when minority- and women-owned businesses were awarded contracts through the “largest, and perhaps oldest affirmative action program in U.S. history.”
The DBE program was defended by the Justice Department during former President Joe Biden’s administration, stating that it was essential to combat discrimination in government contracting, which had led to less favorable outcomes for the aforementioned demographic groups. Under President Donald Trump’s leadership the tone of the Justice Department has shifted. As AFROTECH™ previously told you, Trump has taken action “to close/end all DEIA initiatives, offices and programs” on the federal level.
Prior to this, there had already been increasing efforts to dismantle programs that favored diverse groups following the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to reverse affirmative action and put a stop to race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities, according to NPR.
Looking ahead, the DBE program, which is directly supported by the U.S. government and administered by individual states, now awaits a judge’s decision on whether it will be allowed to continue. This could impact 10% of federal funding, which is currently allocated to women- and minority-owned contracting firms within the transportation sector, according to The Washington Post.
“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. “Thousands of workers and small businesses have been victimized, and hundreds of billions have been spent, distorting the market and inflating construction costs for the taxpayers. That ends now.”
