A coalition of U.S. senators, including Georgia’s Raphael Warnock, is challenging the U.S. Department of Transportation to restore a minority business government contract program that has helped Black entrepreneurs in metro Atlanta secure lucrative deals with the federal government.
Warnock was one of several senators who sent a letter Monday to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy calling on him to restore the agency’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise and Airport Concessions programs. The programs were indefinitely paused in October after the agency determined that awarding contracts to minority groups that have historically been discriminated against was discriminatory and unconstitutional. The move came months after President Donald Trump’s cancellation of federal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.
The programs are based on the policies established by former Atlanta Mayor Maynard Jackson during the 1970s. It’s been more than half a century since the city’s first Black mayor forced Georgia’s white business and political power structure to set aside 25% of Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport terminal and concourse design, planning, and construction contracts for women and minority entrepreneurs in exchange for not delaying the facility’s massive expansion in 1980.
Jackson’s ultimatum laid the groundwork for minority contracting policies that were adopted across the nation for 50 years. That was before Trump’s 2025 elimination of federal DEI initiatives took hold last year.
Warnock’s office said the federal DOT programs supported more than 4,000 small businesses inside Hartsfield-Jackson and throughout Georgia that have been “sidelined” as a result of the disruption.
In a statement Friday, Warnock told Capital B Atlanta that attacks on these DOT programs are attacks on “small businesses, good-paying jobs, and competition that saves taxpayers money.”
“Unfortunately, this administration is trying to divide us with culture wars instead of doing what’s best to grow our economy,” Warnock said. “I urge the Department of Transportation to come to its senses, stop these self-destructive attacks, and work with Congress to continue these critical programs.”
Secretary Duffy and the White House haven’t responded to Capital B Atlanta’s requests for comment.
Black business leader Kenneth Canty underscored the importance of the DOT’s programs during a U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee in March. The CEO of multiple companies, including the Savannah-based American Meridian Contracting Corp., recalled hearing racial slurs, being violently arrested for allegedly bogus charges of failing to pay union dues, and struggling to secure venture capital throughout his career, which began in Boston during the late 1990s.
Canty said many key contractors won’t engage with small minority-owned subcontractors without the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program.
“The DBE program, while limited, provides an essential counterweight to those structural disadvantages,” Canty told elected leaders in March. “My experiences illustrate why the DBE program remains necessary to address persistent discrimination in the heavy civil construction industry and to ensure minority-owned businesses can meaningfully compete.”
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