South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson continues to back President Trump’s anti-DEA agenda, submitting a regulatory comment letter supporting the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Interim Final Rule to eliminate race- and sex-based preferences.
The programs, the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise Program and the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise in Airport Program, would continue to operate under the Interim Final Rule, but would apply to all citizens, regardless of race or sex.
“Chief Justice John Roberts said it best—the best way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating,” Wilson said.
Wilson said the proposed change is needed to bring the programs into line with the U.S. Constitution and federal law.
“Although both programs may be rooted in a laudable desire to ‘level the playing field for businesses seeking to participate in federally assisted contracts and in airport concessions,’ Congress has mandated that the programs use improper and discriminatory means to achieve this objective by assuming that certain individuals—namely, women and certain racial and ethnic groups—are presumptively disadvantaged,” Wilson wrote in a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy.
In an opinion his office released in September 2023, his office said that race-conscious and gender-conscious government programs are “presumptively unconstitutional.”