Judge tells US it's not his job to search for better evidence as he strikes down minority business program
A federal judge in Texas appeared exasperated with government lawyers when he ruled that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency unconstitutionally denies benefits based on race. (Image from Shutterstock)
A federal judge in Texas appeared exasperated with government lawyers when he ruled that the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Minority Business Development Agency unconstitutionally denies benefits based on race.
U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman of the Northern District of Texas barred the agency from applying a statutory presumption that certain minorities are socially or economically disadvantaged, which entitles them to benefits under the program. The presumption violates the due process clause, he said in a March 5 opinion.
The government had argued that the presumption is constitutional because it remedied past discrimination in which the government “passively participated.”
One issue is credit access. Questions that must be answered, Pittman said, are whether incidents of historic discrimination caused minority businesses to have less access to credit, and if the problem is rooted in private-sector disparities, whether the government participated in causing it.
The evidence shows that minority businesses are more likely to be denied loans, get less money when they apply, and have to pay more for it, the government had argued. But Pittman said the government must identify past incidents of discrimination that caused the problem.
While the government identifies a few concrete examples of past discrimination, the record fails to trace those few examples to modern disparities today, Pittman said.
“If the record contains more specifics, the agency fails to identify them,” wrote Pittman, an appointee of former President Donald Trump. “While the court expended hundreds of man-hours reviewing the record, it isn’t the court’s job to mine a 4,456-page record to find better evidence for the agency.”
Pittman also chided the government for offering scant evidence that the government participated in credit discrimination.
“While the court doesn’t have to prospect the record for evidence favoring the agency,” Pittman wrote, “it did anyway.”
Outside two appendixes, the summary judgment record contains the word “government” 1,206 times and the word “federal” 1,308 times, he said. Only 16 references identify the government’s participation in discrimination.
Pittman found only one compelling government interest, which was related to discrimination in government contracting. But the agency’s race-based presumption is not narrowly tailored to serve that interest, Pittman concluded.
Under the agency’s list of presumptively disadvantaged business people, “Oprah Winfrey is presumptively disadvantaged, while plaintiffs and even more disadvantaged Americans are not,” Pittman wrote.
Pittman issued a nationwide injunction, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision that struck down race-conscious college admissions programs in a challenge by Students for Fair Admissions, a group challenging the programs.
“Though [the Students for Fair Admissions case] concerned college admissions, nothing in the decision indicates the court’s holding should be constrained to that context,” Pittman wrote.
The plaintiffs in the minority business case are represented by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which called the decision a “historic legal victory.”
Hat tip to Reuters, which noted Pittman’s comments. The Washington Post and the New York Times also covered the opinion, Nuziard v. Minority Business Development Agency.
