DOJ retreats on Biden 'racial equity' agenda

 American Action News:

The Biden administration has backed down from defending two race-based programs that were central to its “racial equity agenda,” the Washington Post reported Friday.

Federal judges ruled that racial preference is unconstitutional in cases regarding the Minority Business Development Agency and the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) program, which provided loans and government contracts on the basis of race, according to the Post. The Department of Justice (DOJ) has not appealed the rulings, instead limiting the scope of the two race-based programs.

The volume of federal contracts for “small disadvantaged companies,” which are primarily minority-owned, grew from $59 billion to $76 billion in the first three years of Biden’s presidency, according to the Post.

Legal experts say the DOJ’s retreat stems from fears of losing in a higher court, according to the Post.

“It’s pretty simple — they aren’t appealing because they will lose,” Dan Lennington, a lawyer at Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which represented the plaintiffs in the Minority Business Development Agency case in Texas, told the Post. “And losing at a higher court is worse because it would create important precedent and accelerate challenges to other programs. … Their litigation strategy appears to be containment — they want to prevent the wholesale dismantling of Biden’s racial equity agenda before he leaves office.”

They might well want to avoid a holding that goes far in undermining or even striking down other programs that serve historically discriminated-against minorities,” Noah Feldman, a constitutional law professor at Harvard University, told the outlet. “Or they could fear that an appeals court would go further than the district court and find there was insufficient evidence of prior discrimination here, with implications for other programs.”
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Racial preference would likely be found to be racial discrimination per se.  It really makes no sense to deal with past discrimination with more discrimination against people who were not responsible for the past discrimination.