Pacific Legal Foundation Sues Caltrans
In April, we blogged about the California Department of Transportation’s (Caltrans) new hiring plan that takes race into account in public contracting. The Federal Highway Administration approved the race-based plan on diversity grounds. Yesterday, the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLE) filed suit against Caltrans on behalf of a contractor.
The agency set aside 6.75 percent of federal contracts for women, blacks, people of Asian-Pacific descent, and American Indians. The American Civil Rights Institute’s Ward Connerly told the Sacramento Bee that the agency is “caving in to minority politics.”
State law bars the government from discriminating against or granting preferences to individuals or groups in hiring, contracting, and admissions based on factors like race and sex, but an exception exists if federal dollars are at stake and if actual discrimination is taking place. PLE’s Sharon Browne said, “We believe there is no evidence that Caltrans will lose federal dollars if they treat all contractors equally.”
Browne said Caltrans’s practice of “coding contractors by color” is “flat-out unconstitutional.” Three years ago, PLE sent Caltrans a letter demanding it stop discriminating against contractors based on race. The agency desisted but found a way around the law, using an exception in the law to claim federal funds would be lost if the agency stopped discriminating against contractors based on race.
It doesn’t make sense to us, either.
