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San Francisco lawmakers declared themselves guilty of discrimination so they could discriminate more.
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court held that “racial balancing” was “patently unconstitutional,” and that affirmative action has to have a “logical end point.” There’s been a lot of commentary about how that will apply to employment law but less about another program of racial discrimination: favoritism to racial minorities in government contracts.
Yet Fair Admissions is already affecting this area of law. Last week Judge Clifton Corker struck down minority contracting preferences at the Small Business Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture on grounds that existing requirements have little justification and “no logical end point.”
Minority contracting requirements have had deleterious effects on almost every aspect of government for decades. They have cost taxpayers countless billions, degraded government services, and deepened racial divisions. Almost a tenth of the American economy goes through government contracts, which involve everything from building submarines to installing software. Federal, state and local governments have set goals for percentages of these contracts that should be awarded to minority-owned businesses. To hit the goals, government officials can “set aside” contracts for minority firms, offer no-bid deals to minority contractors, or select minority contractors with higher bids than competitors.
Continue reading the entire piece here at The Wall Street Journal (paywall)
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Judge Glock is the director of research and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor at City Journal.
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