DOT Agrees to Remove Race, Gender Based Criteria From DBE Program
Date Posted: June 2, 2025
Posted In: Discussion, Ideas, News, Workforce,
From Construction Dive: The DOT has agreed to settle a case challenging the constitutionality of its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program, effectively barring women- and minority-owned companies from automatic inclusion in the initiative.
In a joint motion filed May 28 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky that still needs a judge’s approval, DOT agreed to no longer defend gender and race as presupposed qualifications for inclusion in the program. “USDOT has determined that the race- and sex-based presumptions in its DBE program can no longer pass constitutional scrutiny,” the agency wrote in court documents.
The move essentially abandons the fight taken on by former President Joe Biden’s administration to defend the program’s constitutionality after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling banned affirmative action in higher education admissions in 2023.
Dive Insight:
Although the proposed settlement casts uncertainty around the future of the DBE program, which was started in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan, it isn’t an absolute death knell.
For instance, the DOT could change the criteria for inclusion in the DBE program to look at specific circumstances, much as the Small Business Administration did for its similar 8(a) Business Development Program after a separate challenge was successful against that initiative.