Airport Experience® News - ACDBE Issue 2025

eliminate the program, he ultimately oversees the agencies that would be responsible for implementing any changes demanded by the courts. Furthering the problem, Session says, is that it’s up in the air whether the Department of Transportation, under President Trump’s lead, intends to defend itself in the case. Leadership of the agency serves at the pleasure of President Trump, who has expressed disdain for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and for affirmative action. “That’s problematic to say the least,” Session says. “AMAC actually filed a petition to intervene as an interested party in the lawsuit. I’m not aware that they’ve ruled yet on that petition. But, again, if your defendant is not defending, if the Department of Transportation would essentially concede to the plaintiff, there’s the ballgame.” Additionally, the Federal Aviation Administration’s staff has been cut significantly since Trump took office in January, creating further questions about the level to which any program rules will be enforced. “I can assure you, as it relates to enforcement and compliance in the Trump administration, nobody is at home,” Session says. “There’s nobody at all.” What Does The Future Look Like? It’s important to note, Session says, that while President Trump has issued a number of executive orders – including one dating back to the Nixon era that prohibited discrimination in government contracting -- those executive orders are not law, Session says. So, theoretically anyway, the program is still operational under its last reauthorization. That said, with a federal program facing lawsuits that its oversight agency has limited motivation to defend, a potentially unfriendly Supreme Court and an anti-affirmative action president overseeing any changes required to the program through legal decisions, what does the DBE program’s future look like? The DBE program was enacted by Congress, so Trump does not have the authority to end the program himself, but if the lawsuit in question requires changes to the program, they would be enacted by a DOT and Federal Aviation Administration overseen by Trump. “The question,” Session says, “is will the program, as time goes on, be so decimated or diluted that, effectively, there is no program, even in the absence of the law being eliminated.”

ASSESSING THE IMPACT Attorney Colette Holt Shares Insights On Legal Implications

BY ANDREW TELLIJOHN

Mid-America Milling Co. vs U.S. Department of Transportation is the most direct case challenging the legitimacy of the federal Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program and its sidekick, the Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprirse Program. Currently, the court has issued a preliminary injunction preventing the DOT from mandating the use of race- and gender-based presumptions for contracts on which Mid-America and its co-plaintiff, Bagshaw Trucking Inc., wish to bid. Colette Holt represents public agencies and private firms on issues related to civil right, public contracting and affirmative action. She has experience conducting defensible disparity studies, providing expert witness commentary, drafting policy and legislation and defending such programs, counseling private firms on compliance with diversity requirements. Holt isn’t personally involved in Mid-America Milling Co. v U.S. Department of Transportation but she’s been watching that case and others that have challenged the legitimacy of

Above: Colette Holt represents public agencies and private firms on issues related to civil right, public contracting and affirmative action

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AX NEWS JUNE 2025