Overview
- U.S. District Judge David Hittner permanently enjoined Houston’s Minority, Women and Small Business Enterprise Program after a non-jury trial, ruling Tuesday that its race-conscious contracting rules violate the Equal Protection Clause.
- Hittner applied the Supreme Court’s 2023 affirmative-action test to city contracting and said Houston failed to produce the concrete, particularized evidence of prior unlawful discrimination required to use race as a remedy.
- The lawsuit was brought by two white-owned landscaping firms, Landscape Consultants of Texas and Metropolitan Landscape Management, represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, and the plaintiffs also have a related suit pending against Harris County.
- The injunction bars the city from enforcing race-based goals for awarding contracts, leaves certified minority-business set-asides on hold, and is likely to prompt an appeal and renewed legal challenges to similar municipal programs.
- Houston has used numerical goals for awarding contracts to small, minority- and women-owned businesses since 1984, so the decision could force cities to redesign programs or adopt race-neutral measures while minority-owned firms and city outreach programs face immediate uncertainty.