Diversity, equity and inclusion develops a counter-movement
Governors start to push back against DEI ideology.
The Biden administration’s so-called "equity agenda" suffered a major defeat in federal court recently. In a lawsuit challenging the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) — a new federal agency dedicated to helping only certain preferred racial groups — a federal judge ruled that the Biden administration cannot discriminate based on race.
Judge Mark Pittman, a Trump-appointee based in Fort Worth, Texas, delivered a remedial lesson in civics to the administration: "The Constitution demands equal treatment under law."
While such a statement should be obvious to any American, this was quite a painful blow to the administration. On his first day in office, President Biden declared a "whole of government" approach to racial equity, requiring all his agencies to "affirmatively advance[e] equity." In practice, the equity agenda resulted in a bevy of programs open to some races, but not others. Farmers, restaurant owners, homeowners, small business owners and federal contractors all got billions in federal tax dollars, so long as they belonged to certain racial groups.
President Biden speaks in the South Court Auditorium on the White House campus in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14, 2021. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The MBDA is the cornerstone of this equity agenda. Created as a permanent federal agency as part of the Infrastructure Act in November 2021, the MBDA is designed to help certain minority business owners with grants, training, consulting, government contracts and other benefits to juice up their bottom lines. As Under Secretary of Commerce Donald Cravins said, "If you are a minority entrepreneur, MBDA is your agency."
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But that’s not exactly true. As Judge Pittman noted, MBDA won’t help business owners "who trace their ancestry" to the Middle East, North Africa or North Asia. What’s more, all minority business owners who own "less than 51% of their business" are excluded from getting MBDA help. So when President Biden announced that his equity agenda would "build community wealth" for "underserved communities," he meant only preferred racial groups — Blacks, Hispanics, Native Americans and some Southeast Asians.
But the world is a big place, so most non-White racial groups are excluded from the Biden administration’s definition of "minority businesses."
The federal government’s ridiculous attempts at racial line-drawing — for example, including Pakistani Americans but excluding Afghani Americans — is just a symptom of the underlying disease. As Chief Justice John Roberts once wrote, "divvying us up by race" is a "sordid business."
Enter Greg Nuziard, Christian Bruckner and Matt Piper. These three White small business owners from Texas, Florida and Wisconsin, sued the Biden administration, alleging that the MBDA is an unconstitutional agency. Represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, where I serve as deputy counsel, all three men attempted to get help from the MBDA but couldn’t because of the color of their skin.
In an email from the MBDA Office in Orlando, Florida, the MBDA told Christian Bruckner that because he was White, they couldn’t help him, but they would be happy to "refer you to our strategic partner… for assistance." Separate but equal, literally.
In court, the Biden administration attorneys vigorously defended this race-based agency, claiming that this type of race discrimination was justified because it was remedying "the effects of past inequities stemming from racial prejudice." According to this narrative, Biden’s attorneys said that redlining, Jim Crow and a "denial of benefits from the G.I. Bill" give modern-day policymakers a blank check to discriminate against Whites and other nonpreferred racial groups.
If this sounds familiar, it should. This is the theory of systemic racism, a modern-day progressive religion, which declares that all present-day racial disparities are caused by past race discrimination, despite clear evidence to the contrary (documented aptly by academics like Thomas Sowell).
According to systemic racism theory, salvation comes through "equity," which is nothing more than reverse discrimination, promising to make sure "we all end up at the same place," as Kamala Harris famously tweeted in 2020.
Judge Pittman was not persuaded. In ruling against the Biden administration, he explained that the Constitution forbids race discrimination, and that the government cannot justify a racial preference merely by pointing to statistical disparities. Allowing this type of justification for a race-based program would give "governments license to create a patchwork of racial preferences based on statistical generalizations about any particular field of endeavor."
Yet that’s exactly the goal of the equity agenda: racial preferences for preferred races.
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Fortunately Judge Pittman followed the lead of a growing list of federal judges who have struck down parts of the equity agenda, including the race-based Farmer Loan Forgiveness Program and the Restaurant Revitalization Fund.
The fight is far from over. Every week, the Biden administration pushes yet another discriminatory program based on race. It will take brave Americans to be vigilant, and when the time comes, to stand up and sue the administration.
If past is prologue, the administration won’t stop discriminating until it is forced to stop by a court.