Federal judge strikes down race-based portion of Houston minority contracting programs<\/a><\/p>\nA white couple in Spring filed the lawsuit back in 2023.<\/p>\n
They claimed racial discrimination because their landscaping businesses were not accepted into the city’s minority program.<\/p>\n
The lawsuit was filed just after the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions policies at Harvard.<\/p>\n
This latest court ruling cites the Harvard case when declaring that the city had violated the Equal Protection Clause, which ensures governments have to apply laws fairly and equally.<\/p>\n
“To go in a room and people automatically judge you based on the color of your skin, it happens every day,” Rachel Bickham said.<\/p>\n
Bickham started her own small career recruitment company in 2017.<\/p>\n
She said she currently has multiple city contracts, and she got them through the city’s Minority, Women and Small Business Enterprise Program.<\/p>\n
“We’re not asking for you to just give us a contract just because we are a certain ethnicity,” she said. “We’re asking for an opportunity to be in the room. We’re asking for an opportunity to compete.”<\/p>\n
Bickham said her business was also part of a similar state initiative called the Historically Underutilized Business Program, but was dropped after the program was turned into a veterans support program last year.<\/p>\n
Many praised the change, but a lawsuit over it is ongoing.<\/p>\n
“They are trying to remove every opportunity that we have, and it’s making it harder,” she said.<\/p>\n
A City of Houston report from last year shows $2.5 billion in contracts were awarded.<\/p>\n
Twenty-three percent of the contracts went to certified minority, women, and small businesses.<\/p>\n
Of that 23%, Hispanic-owned businesses received 34% of contracts, Asian-owned businesses got 22%, white women-led businesses got 17%, and Black-owned businesses got 14%.<\/p>\n
The ruling only applies to race, so small and female-owned businesses could still be given some priority under the city program.<\/p>\n
But multiple council members at Wednesday’s meeting said that’s not enough.<\/p>\n
“I hope that the legal department will prioritize this to ensure that we are sending a message to minority businesses that we are going to protect them and fight for them regardless of the climate that we have,” Councilmember Alejandra Salinas said.<\/p>\n
Harris County also has a similar program for minority businesses.<\/p>\n
The same couple is also suing the county, with that lawsuit still ongoing.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 KTRK-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) — The City Attorney said the City of Houston is looking into whether to appeal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":391442,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[137899,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-391441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-137899","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=391441"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/391441\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/391442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=391441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=391441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=391441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}