Supreme Court to hear affirmative action case

[JollyRoger]

The Supreme Court on Monday stepped into the years-long controversy over whether federal agencies are doing enough to assure that government contracts go to businesses run by ________. The Justices accepted a case from a Maryland small business which has repeatedly protested that Department ________ has not been doing its part.

The case of Kingdomware Technologies, Inc., v. United States was the only case in which the Court granted review in a new round of orders. It will be argued and decided in the next Term.

Congress, frustrated by little success in getting federal agencies to give work to businesses owned by _________, decided in 2006 to try to make Department ______ a model for other parts of the government to follow. The new case before the Justices is a test of whether, under the 2006 law, Department ______ has a mandatory duty to set aside business for ________ firms, or has a wide measure of discretion whether to do so.

Raising that issue is Kingdomware, a firm based in a suburb of Washington, D.C., that provides government and private customers with a range of information technology services. It is owned by ________ Timothy Barton, who is ________.

The firm has been carrying on a running legal battle with Department _________, in protests over its claim that Department ________ is failing to carry out its obligations to _______-owned contractors. Kingdomware won a series of protests to the Government Accountability Office, but decided to sue Department _________ when the GAO rulings did not have the kind of impact that it believed the 2006 law required.

At the center of the legal dispute is the meaning of the word “shall” in a congressional mandate to Department _______ to use a “rule of two” in deciding whether to award agency contracts to small businesses owned by _________. The law says that Department __________ “shall” award contracts to _______-owned small businesses if at least two such firms bid for a contract at a fair price for the government.

Scotusblog

Should be an interesting case.

 

[Zkribbler]

I'm not sure what this court is about. Quotas and set-asides were outlawed by the 1973 Bakke decision, which also found that affirmative action was constitutional.

The mechanics of the law described involved set-asides, not affirmative action.

 

[Antilogic]

I see what you did there.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Yep. Let's see the conservatives complain about this "affirmative action".

Why in the world should we give preferential treatment to any business owner for government contracts, much less on the completely lame grounds that he was once in the military? This is just the Republican Party's latest attempt to subsidize their supporters to the detriment of everybody else.

So, of course, the reactionaries on the Supreme Court will likely be in favor of it. You can't very well expect them to have judicial integrity when it directly affects GOP purse strings and political favoritism. This smells like yet another 5-4 unfavorable opinion.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Why in the world should we give preferential treatment to any business owner for government contracts

We should not. The only preferential treatment should be for contracts believed to be highest quality/best value. Contracts like this are set-ups to destroy incentive, other than incentive to join the military...but it is laughably inefficient as a recruitment tool.

If one wants to help veterans, it might be a better course of action to start with the ones that really need help badly and are given poor care/support, which could be done on a larger scale and for less cost than this nonsense.

I took the OP to be some kind of party-minded set-up for an argument/case to be made, but all it does when I look at it is illustrate one of many ways government spending is awful. Using blanks in that context is helpful, in that it really doesn't matter what you write there...but that cuts a lot of ways. The core issue is the one I quoted, and I agree with you on this point.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Indeed. Successful business owners should be at the very bottom of those who get a government handout, not the very first ones in line. And it is completely contrary to the government bidding procedures to try to assure the taxpayers don't get completely screwed.

It is all part of the Republican platform for personal success. Give handouts to business owners, and eventually it will "trickle down" to everybody else just like warm yellow fluids seeking the lowest level. Let gravity do the work.