Two leading legal organizations — Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and the Center for Individual Rights (CIR) — have filed a major lawsuit against the Trump Administration aimed at dismantling what remains of the federal DEI apparatus: taxpayer-funded racial preferences built around the term “socially disadvantaged individuals.”
The lawsuit challenges the Small Business Administration’s Section 8(a) program, which for years has funneled federal benefits — including grants, loans, and contracts — to companies selected not on merit, but on race. Plaintiffs include Revier Technologies, a Louisiana start-up developing construction-industry AI, and the Young America’s Foundation (YAF), a prominent conservative student organization.
WILL argues that although the Biden Administration aggressively expanded these race-based programs under the American Rescue Plan Act, Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, the underlying structure predates Biden — and continues to operate today.
After successfully eliminating multiple discriminatory DEI schemes in court, WILL says it is now going after the core legal justification behind them all.
WILL Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington said the time has come to end the federal effort to rank Americans by skin color.
“This is just a code word for race discrimination, and we plan to eliminate its use once and for all.”
YAF Associate General Counsel Madison Hahn echoed that message, calling the scheme a “governmentally imposed caste system” that locks qualified students out of key opportunities solely because they are not considered “disadvantaged” by Washington bureaucrats.
The lawsuit details how these federal rules have real-world consequences:
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YAF members, despite strong qualifications, are blocked from a Department of Homeland Security fellowship because they are not labeled “socially disadvantaged.”
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Revier Technologies was denied a critical federal grant because its white owner did not meet the government’s preferred racial classification.
As the complaint notes, being labeled “socially disadvantaged” has become a big business — driving hundreds of billions of federal dollars into programs where eligibility hinges on race.
The term “socially disadvantaged” isn’t limited to one agency—it now infects major areas of federal spending:
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NASA: 8% of contract dollars
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EPA: 10% of Clean Air Act research funding
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Department of Defense: procurement and contracting
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USDA: grants to rural businesses
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FDIC: bank outreach initiatives
Multiple states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and North Carolina, have adopted the same categories to decide who gets tax-funded “equity” benefits.
Since 2021, WILL has led a nationwide effort to roll back discriminatory programs under its Equality Under the Law Project, representing over 100 clients in more than two dozen states. The new lawsuit is one of five ongoing efforts to strike down racial favoritism in federal programs involving:
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Education scholarships
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Investment rules
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Agriculture grants
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Transportation contracting
Conservatives argue that America should not return to a system where race determines opportunity — but that is exactly what DEI initiatives have done.
This lawsuit signals a major shift: the fight is no longer just against individual DEI programs — it’s against the entire legal foundation that enabled them.
And if WILL and CIR succeed, the federal government may soon be forced to return to the principle that should have guided it all along:
Equality means equal treatment — not equal outcomes enforced by racial discrimination.
