A federal judge in Texas has issued a nationwide injunction ordering President Biden and the Minority Business Development Agency, or MBDA, to serve and assist white business owners, too.
The federal agency, which is part of the U.S. Commerce Department, was established during the Nixon administration to help minority-owned businesses in light of economic discrimination.
Judge Mark T. Pittman wrote a 93-page ruling that states the agency’s work may be intended to "alleviate opportunity gaps" faced by minority-owned businesses but, he said, "two wrongs don't make a right, and the MBDA's racial presumption is a wrong."
Cara Tolliver is an attorney with the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which filed the successful lawsuit against the MBDA. She tells AFN the agency’s work goes back decades but its mission changed for the worse in 2021. That is when President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act into law.
According to an Associated Press story, Biden’s signage of the federal law gave the MBDA a huge budget increase, $550 million over five years, and the new law also “widened its scope” to help minority business owners, the AP said.
According to Tolliver’s version of what happened three years ago, MBDA was given an “explicitly race-based charter” and then expanded that race-based focus nationwide with numerous regional offices.
Farther down in the ruling, Judge Pittman noted white people are not listed among the “list of preferred races” which means they must overcome a presumption by the MBDA they are not economically disadvantaged business owners.
The mission of the MBDA likely aligns with the Biden administration’s focus on race-based ideology, such as critical race theory, which claims racial minorities are the victims of an unfair power structure dominated by racist whites who want to hold onto power.
In its story about the ruling, John F. Robinson of the National Minority Business Council called the ruling "a blow against minority owned businesses.”
That argument is objectively true, since the MBDA helped minority-owned businesses raise more than $1.2 billion in capital in 2022, according to the AP.
Tolliver, however, insists all Americans are entitled by the U.S. Constitution “to be free from intentional race discrimination by the federal government."
