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The efforts of the Biden administration to distribute federal benefits by race are already encountering legal problems. Two rulings last week sided with plaintiffs suing the Small Business Administration for violating equal treatment under the law.
It is about the SBA requirement that in the first 21 days only requests for restaurant relief from women and ethnic minorities who send everyone else to the back of the line are processed. As the courts have recognized, there is a risk that the SBA will run out of funds before it can examine these other claims.
A federal judge in Texas ruled that the SBA’s Restaurant Revitalization Fund wrongly distributed $ 28.6 billion in Covid-19 relief based on an owner’s gender and race. Plaintiffs Jason and Janice Smith’s Blessed Cajuns restaurant lost nearly $ 350,000 in gross revenue due to Covid-19. Eric Nyman’s restaurant lost $ 800,000 during the pandemic.
America First Legal, which she represents, states that they are eligible for relief but not for priority group status from the SBA. Federal Judge Reed O’Connor issued an injunction on the grounds that the restaurateurs had “been discriminated against by government officials because of their race and gender.”
Meanwhile, the Vitolo Appeals Court of Sixth Instance against Guzman issued an injunction against the SBA on behalf of white plaintiff Antonio Vitolo, half-owner of Jakes Bar and Grill in Tennessee. The other half belongs to his wife, a Latina. In a 2-1 ruling by Judge Alan Norris, Judge Amul Thapar cites Supreme Court precedents such as Adarand and Richmond v Croson to refute the discriminatory logic of the SBA.
The SBA justifies its bias as necessary to eliminate past social discrimination. Judge Thapar notes, however, that the Supreme Court has found that such an appeal is warranted only in narrow circumstances. It must deal with a specific episode of past discrimination, the previous discrimination must have been intentional, and the government must have played a role in that discrimination. Judge Thapar writes that the SBA fails all three tests.
This legal analysis is an arrow to the core of much of the racially divisive agenda of the Biden administration. At the very least, Biden’s lawyers will be forced to explain their justification for distributing racial booty with far greater accuracy. Even if they do, these and similar cases can land in the Supreme Court.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which argued for Mr. Vitolo and Jake’s Bar and Grill, notes that Judge Thapar cites the famous 2007 conclusion on John Roberts’ pluralism in a case involving racial preferences in the Seattle school system goes: One way to stop racial discrimination is to end racial discrimination. ”
The Supreme Court is currently considering whether to admit students for fair admissions against Harvard, regarding the university’s use of the race to discriminate against Asian Americans in admissions. The SBA cases are a reminder that even if the court rejects the Harvard case, the issue of racial preferences will not go away. It will return in hundreds of equally controversial ways because it is a fundamental principle of the American Constitution.
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