*Recent Federal Court Cases Challenging Race Based Affirmative Action
*Federal Court Ruling on Federal Government Programs. On March 4, 2024, a federal judge in Texas ordered the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) to open its doors to all races. The MBDA, a 55-year-old federal agency in the Commerce Department was created to help minority-owned businesses. The mission statement of the Agency states that it to assist “socially and disadvantaged persons” This ruling potentially imperils dozens of government programs that also presume racial minorities are inherently disadvantaged. In his opinion, U.S. District Judge Mark T. Pittman ruled that the MBDA’s presumption that businesses owned by Blacks, Latinos and other minorities are disadvantaged violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. He permanently enjoined the agency’s business centers, which have assisted minority-owned businesses in accessing capital and government contracts, from extending services based on an applicant’s race.
Supreme Court Ruling on Education Programs. On Thursday, June 29th, 2023, the United States Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action college admissions policies are unconstitutional. As a result of the ruling that began with the cases of the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard University, the race-conscious policies that had been in place for about half a century are now banned in all American colleges and universities, public and private.
The concept of race based affirmative action has long been controversial. Throughout the USA there is wide variation of acceptance. The graphic shown below illustrates the state by state situation in 2022 with blue indicating affirmative action being allowed and yellow indicating it being banned. [Graph by Svenskbygderna -own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=119780167]
