By Jack Tomczuk<\/p>\n
Mayor Cherelle Parker this week scrapped longstanding provisions aimed at ensuring minority, women, and disabled-owned businesses are included in Philadelphia\u2019s municipal contracts.<\/p>\n
In its place, her administration will give a preference to companies that qualify as \u201csmall\u201d and \u201clocal.\u201d The change was made in response to a 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision and resulting rulings across the country, officials said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is a point where the risk becomes so high that we have to pivot, and that is the case here,\u201d City Solicitor Renee Garcia told reporters at a news conference Tuesday afternoon.<\/p>\n
Parker\u2019s move away from race- and gender-based guidelines comes as President Donald Trump and his allies lead an effort to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives<\/a>, many of which were adopted in the wake of the 2020 racial justice demonstrations following the police killing of George Floyd.<\/p>\n The city government\u2019s provision has been in place since the 1980s. City Hall spends about $4 billion annually on contracts through its operating and capital budgets, and, in recent years, there has been a goal of awarding at least 35% of the money to firms whose majority owners are minorities, women or people with disabilities.<\/p>\n \u201cMy advice would be the same no matter if it was Donald Trump or Kamala Harris in the White House because this is case law,\u201d Garcia said.<\/p>\n She recalled approaching Parker after a series of recent cases that the city\u2019s legal team felt undermined the basis for the diversity measure.<\/p>\n Two years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in a matter involving Harvard University that affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional, setting off additional lawsuits that successfully challenged race-based policies elsewhere, Garcia said.<\/p>\n Locally, a court found that the diversity terms in the city\u2019s labor agreements for construction projects were discriminatory. That language mirrors the contracting guidelines, according to Garcia.<\/p>\n To defend the program in court, the city would have had to prove that the minority-, women-, and disabled-owned enterprise (M\/W\/DSBE) initiative was designed to directly remedy previous government discrimination and was as narrowly tailored as possible, Garcia stated.<\/p>\n The Parker administration hired an outside law firm specializing in constitutional law to review the policy and determine whether it would stand up to scrutiny, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe came to the conclusion that we were at the end legally, that we had hit an obstacle that could not be overcome with the current program,\u201d Garcia said. \u201cWe were not going to meet the legal standard.\u201d<\/p>\n Parker, Garcia added, was \u201cin anguish\u201d after being briefed about the situation.<\/p>\n \u201cBut this is the way forward,\u201d the solicitor said. \u201cThis is how we\u2019re going to have a better program. We\u2019re going to be legally compliant. We\u2019re going to do it on our terms.\u201d<\/p>\n The mayor and her deputies asserted that they were planning to overhaul the 40-year-old M\/W\/DSBE program, even before the legal risks became clear. Eighty percent of the businesses that became certified through the effort never received city contracts, officials said.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be quite honest, it was not working,\u201d Chief Deputy Mayor Vanessa Garrett Harley said. \u201cThe overwhelming majority of the folks who were benefitting the most turned out to be white women, when we looked at the demographics.\u201d<\/p>\n