Five months after a federal court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s overhaul of a U.S. Department of Transportation program, minority-owned businesses say they are being shut out of billions of dollars in construction work.
The 2021 Biden-era bipartisan $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act set a national goal for the Transportation Department to steer at least 10% of surface transportation, public transit and highway safety research funding to disadvantaged businesses. But the department’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program – a 42‑year‑old federal initiative to help minority and women‑owned firms compete for contracts to repair roads, bridges and highways – is now in flux.
A U.S. district court in Kentucky cleared the way last October for the administration to end the program’s automatic presumption that businesses owned by women or racial minorities were socially and economically disadvantaged, part of a broader campaign to overhaul or eliminate race or gender-conscious government programs such as diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives known as DEI.
Under the new rules, roughly 50,000 firms nationwide are required to submit “personal narratives” along with other financial documents to recertify. Firms must demonstrate, based on their individual experiences and without reference to race or sex, that they are socially and economically disadvantaged by detailing specific instances of hardship, systemic barriers and denied opportunities.
Since certification is handled at the state level, where federal transportation dollars are distributed, they face a state-by-state patchwork of timelines and processes and the suspension of participation goals for major infrastructure projects.
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Firms that held the disadvantaged business certification said they have been required to reapply, with some still waiting months to hear back from state agencies reviewing their applications.
During the prolonged reevaluation process, minority and women-owned firms can still bid on contracts but face competition against larger, better-capitalized firms, undermining what they describe as the program’s purpose of leveling the playing field in transportation contracting, four procurement consultants and lawyers told Reuters.
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In February, the Trump administration halted the $16 billion Gateway Tunnel project between New York and New Jersey to ensure that the funding wasn’t tied to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives it deemed unconstitutional. The funding was restored nearly two weeks later, when a federal court ordered the release of the funds.
New Jersey started the process of reevaluating disadvantaged businesses on January 12, but would not say when they expected the process to conclude. The New York State Department of
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Florida, which received $16.7 billion under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, is advocating for the repeal of the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program altogether.
A November 20, 2025 memo from Florida Department of Transportation Secretary Jared W. Perdue, viewed by Reuters, said “Florida firmly believes” that the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program “must be repealed entirely and replaced with a program whose primary purpose is advocating for improving economic competitiveness and small business development.”
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The $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law was intended to route federal dollars through state and local agencies to support local job creation. But minority contractors say that without the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program those dollars won’t flow to minority and women-owned businesses.
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Contractors that were once part of the disadvantaged businesses program say the program has been unfairly characterized as a quota system when it was really just a participation goal that encouraged good-faith efforts to include minority-owned firms on taxpayer-funded projects.
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The post Minority Contractors Say Trump DEI Rollback Poses Threat to Their Livelihoods appeared first on American Renaissance.
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