May 30, 2025
Indiana businesses allege they lost out on jobs after the DOT gave contracts through what they describe as the “largest, and perhaps oldest affirmative action program in U.S. history.”
The Trump administration’s Department of Transportation (DOT) has agreed to terminate a $37 billion program that takes race and gender into consideration when awarding highway and transit project contracts to minority and women-owned businesses, USA Today reports.
The long, ongoing legal battle between DOT and companies Mid-America Milling and Bagshaw Trucking came to an end on May 28 as the agency agreed its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program (DBE) program is “unconstitutional” for “use of race- and sex-based presumptions,” sharing similar sentiments of Kentucky’s U.S. District Judge Gregory Van Tatenhove. In September 2024, during the Biden-Harris administration’s reign, Tatenhove claimed funding for businesses geared toward minorities and women violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection guarantees.
Prior to the Supreme Court’s controversial overturning of affirmative action policies in college admissions, Biden’s DOT supported the initiative, stating the program was a way to smooth over past discriminatory practices.
If the decision is approved by a judge, according to the Washington Post, DBE will be banned from awarding contracts based on race and sex, overshadowing its birth mission. Dan Lennington, deputy counsel at conservative nonprofit Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, who represents the companies, celebrated the notion, saying the program “victimized” thousands of small business owners. “Over the past five decades, the federal government imposed a policy of race discrimination in the road building industry,” Lennington said.
“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.”
Owners of both Indiana-based transportation companies alleged the businesses lost out on jobs after the federal agency started giving contracts through what they describe as the “largest, and perhaps oldest, affirmative action program in U.S. history.” The popular program is responsible for close to 10% of federal funding for transportation infrastructure to women- and minority-owned contracting firms.
At the time, Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 — worth $1.2 trillion — in addition to providing $105 billion in federal funding geared toward airport and flight safety improvements.
What may be deemed as another victory for the Trump administration, following his executive order to scratch out all federal-level programming that caters to diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, may be short-lived.
A coalition of businesses had argued that DBE is vital to knocking over barriers that minority and women business owners face in the $759 billion industry. Since the program’s inception, DBE has served almost 50,000 businesses labeled as “disadvantaged.”
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