San Diego will take the legally risky step of giving preferential treatment to women- and minority-owned businesses when awarding city contracts, a move that appears to be in direct conflict with a voter-approved state proposition that sought to ban affirmative action.
Despite advice from City Attorney Mara Elliott warning against creating such programs, the City Council voted 9-0 this week to establish legally defensible policies that aim to help businesses owned by women and people of color get their fair share of billions of dollars that San Diego awards in city contracts.
Councilmembers said they are aware of the legal risk, and of the failures of other cities like San Jose to successfully create preferences that aren’t struck down by courts for violating Proposition 209, the measure outlawing such preferences that state voters approved in 1996.
But councilmembers said aggressive action is needed to make San Diego a more equitable city, despite the potential legal risks.
Their move is being fueled by a disparity study released last summer that showed businesses owned by women and minorities — particularly Black people and Native Americans — don’t get their fair share of city contracts.
Businesses owned by White women and people of color received only 19 percent of $2.2 billion in city contracts awarded during a five-year period analyzed in the study, compared to the 31 percent the study says they should have landed.
“I don’t think you can look at the data, see the disparities and not think there was intent there — unless you think there was something wrong with the folks who were left behind,” Council President Sean Elo-Rivera said.
Establishing intent will be key to San Diego’s efforts, because Elliott has said preferences can only be legal under Proposition 209 if there is a compelling government interest to them, such as reversing clear evidence of intentional discrimination.
City staff and the authors of the disparity study say there is no evidence that San Diego’s inequitable awarding of contracts is the result of intentional discrimination, but council members disagree.
Councilmember Raul Campillo said many courts have ruled that substantial disparities are evidence of discrimination.
“We have to ask ourselves, ‘How can the data be so skewed?'” he said.
Campillo said the spirit of Proposition 209 is an equal playing field for contracts, but the city’s track record shows the playing field has been unequal.
“A reasonable inference, and in my mind the only reasonable inference, is that Proposition 209 is being violated as we speak,” he said, contending the city is obligated to change a process that has hurt women and people of color. “I think we all know we need to take this further.”
Councilmember Monica Montgomery Steppe, who has spearheaded the effort to establish preferences in partnership with Campillo, said San Diego must take the legal risk.
“The evidence is here,” she said. “I believe we owe it to the people to fight for what I believe is right.”
Proposition 209 outlaws gender or racial preferences in government contracting, but Elliott says such preferences could potentially be OK if they are narrowly tailored and serve a compelling government interest.
In a legal memo issued last summer, she cautioned against creating contracting preferences because the San Diego disparity study didn’t find evidence that “intentional discrimination” played a role in the city’s inequitable outcomes.
“Although the study revealed disparities in some categories of contracting, there is no evidence of intentional discrimination that would permit the establishment of a program that targets persons with protected characteristics, such as race or gender,” Elliott wrote.
When cities have tried to create preferential programs that meet Proposition 209’s strict requirements, their efforts have failed in court. For example, in 2000, the state Supreme Court ruled against a San Jose law requiring “participation goals” and “targeted outreach.”
In conjunction with voting to create preferences, the council approved more than a dozen new contracting policies Tuesday that do not explicitly address gender and race but still aim to help women- and minority-owned contractors.
They include dividing large contracts up so that smaller companies have the capacity to fulfill them, reducing bonding requirements some businesses can’t afford and improving outreach to businesses owned by women and minorities.
This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.
©2022 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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Public Law 88-352 (78 Stat. 241). The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Provisions of this civil rights act forbade discrimination on the basis of sex, as well as, race in hiring, promoting, and firing. The Act prohibited discrimination in public accommodations and federally funded programs.
“San Diego will take the legally risky step of giving preferential treatment to women- and minority-owned businesses when awarding city contracts, a move that appears to be in direct conflict with a voter-approved state proposition that sought to ban affirmative action“
Notice how the Democrat Party cult and its disciples and RINOs do not obey, support or follow neither our U.S. Laws nor our U.S. Constitution. They have no respect or honor for the Supreme Court or its member and will attempt to destroy anyone that does not bow down to this treasonous, socialist, Democrat Party’s will and objectives.
Also note that everything God has declared a Sin or an Abomination, the Democrat Party cult and its disciples encourage, protect and support.
“San Diego Will Steer Contracts To Women And People Of Color”,,,,,Well when steerers and steers who by definition have no gonads, attempt to Contract with anyone, be it women or People of Color, they have not the capacity to produce anything viable. Every red-blooded American who earns his business by the sweat of his brow will completely dominate the business worlds of the competing people of forced minority privilege, handed their businesses by people who get paid in votes, but never pay their dues to join the club of leadership nor dominance themselves. Getting one’s fair share is only fair when the competition is on a level playing field, not one where only the women and minorities get to wear the cleats, while the rest have to slide about the muddied playing field in bare feet like mud wrestlers. The social manipulators of outcomes, not equality, in their very actions confirm the proposition that they really do feel women and People of Color so inferior, that they have to be given artificial privilege to hide the fact to keep the very deception alive that keeps themselves in unearned power and unearned political success. Again, the road to economic hell is paved (or disguised) with their proposed good intentions that always lead to bad collective outcomes, and there will create no equality OR equity in this fouled attempt just more division.
‘… City staff and the authors of the disparity study say there is no evidence that San Diego’s inequitable awarding of contracts is the result of intentional discrimination, but council members disagree… From this Article.
There are many ways to ” Pay Reparations,” to Minorities and the Socialist, Communist, Democrat Party of America Want and need their votes, if they have to buy them, so be it.
AHH, but as we see time and time again.. THAT Equality law, ONLY EVER FAVORS women and POC..
ITS never ever applied to favor whites or men. ONLY PUNISH THEM!
We’ve already seen how “affirmative action” and “equal opportunity” has worked out.
The Bungle from the Jungle and The Cackling Hyena are two cases in point.
Job discrimination only applies when the lazy, incompetent, whiney POC and feminazis are involved.
Human intellect is becoming extinct.
MLK must be spinning in his grave to see how foreign secular socialists, now disguised as moral American Democrats have corrupted the concept of equal rights and discrimination, where majority people formerly discriminated against what destroyed American prosperity to elevate the best and the brightest, are now replaced with mini-me minority people pushing the weakest and most unprepared into the leadership roles based on Party vote gleaning, or in Joe Biden’s case, the magnitude of chuckleheadedness, the ability to talk endlessly in circles without say anything meaningful, skin color or gendered sex who get preferential treatment to be gifted for free with the power and Successes of the American dream, that hard working adults of all colors expended the sweat equity and human life force to earn. One’s I.Q must be pretty low, or your ability to understand the English language at a minimum if you cannot DISCRIMINATE between blessed and earned equal rights and stolen unearned equal outcomes. The devil is most assuredly in their details, who now are so bold in stolen power, that they openly steal rights and personal property, knowing well that their well placed Judicial stooges will enforce no laws on the books to prevent their evil intentions. Not to mention send their crime family leaders to prison. If George Washington caught them in their treason during the real revolution, he would have hung or shot them on the spot.
Son Of Thunder:
Human Democrat intellect is becoming extinct.
DID dems ever have any intellect?
The Democrats (Communists in Progressive clothing) care nothing about the laws of this Nation or the Constitution. They are hell-bent on destroying EVERYTHING this Country stands for including its history. If the GOP doesn’t take back the House and Senate in November, we are officially screwed forever!
Unfortunately, even if we DO TAKE IT BACK, i fear with the utter cowardice, we’ve routinely SEEN from the GOP, they still won’t do anything about this.
Spot on!! They used to lecture us to “Vote if you don’t like the way the country is going”.
We can’t even do that since mules have taken over.
affirmative action run amoc.
So, instead of weeding out and firing those who apparently broke the discrimination laws, they’ve decided to find some way to break the laws by discriminating against white male owned businesses. Hummm, they’re no better than the others, just acting like they care, and willing to break laws as well!
Hey look at me: I’m a ‘person of color’ too; I’m pink in the winter, and tan in the summer!
Then let a Republican mayor Denounce all contract will go to only white men and white only colleges. You must hire 99% of employees must be white. That’s illegal but it’s what they are doing with poc. Oh I forgot only white reporters
YOU Can just imagine the # of lawsuits that mayor would get, IF ONE HAD THE NADS To even attempt that.
Jusr like most things being done by the lowest bidder, results are not always as planned and end up costing more cause that low bidder has just declared bankruptcy or does not have the funds to correct the errors.
Anyone bother to check why these mom and pop businesses do not do well; the just do not have the money to compete for a job. Some want steak with hamburger funds.
Yet once again, government screws over the majority of the public.
Gotta wonder about California voters!
– They passed Prop 8, which banned gay marriage.
– They passed Prop 22, which was supposed to override that stupid AB5 bill, and allow gig workers.
– They passed Prop 209 to outlaw set-aside contracts.
But they voted for Newsom, voted again to keep him in office (i.e. failed recall), and will probably re-elect his dumb a$$ this time too. And they keep sending Pelosi back to DC. And they also have a Dem super-majority in their Assembly – no Republican legislation gets a vote, but plenty of handouts sure do!
Ibet that if you at every bill passed there is millions of “pork” for california and in particular for the district she
“owns”. Same applies for all politicians from there.
I USED to think San diego being a military town, was one of the few RED spots in this utter contemptable commie state. BUT more and more, i am being proven WRONG about that belief.
White Males Need Not Apply
As i’ve often said, discriminating against white males, is not just allowed, but CONDONED.
This kind of thing happens much more than people realize but California has brought it out into the open and it known to the general public that they are giving certain contractors preferential treatment. In other words, if the business isn’t owned by a woman or POC then don’t bother trying to apply. Just wait until San Diego has streets repaved and the work is so bad it would’ve been better just to gravel the street. This will cause more racism.