A federal appellate court on Thursday struck down a provision in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that discriminated against white restaurant owners as well as minorities from seemingly random countries.
Glenn Greenwald reported on his Substack that the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the racial and gender preferences included in the law that provided priority funding to minority owned small restaurants violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
“The specific provision struck down was part of the law’s $29 billion Restaurant Revitalization Fund grant program for small, privately owned restaurants struggling to meet payroll and rent due to the COVID crisis. The law, which was passed almost entirely by a party-line vote in March, grants priority status to restaurants that have 51% ownership or more composed of specific racial and ethnic groups as well as women. By effectively relegating struggling businesses owned by white males or ethnicities and nationalities excluded from a priority designation ‘to the back of the line,’ the COVID relief program, ruled the court by a 2-1 decision, ran afoul of core constitutional guarantees,” Greenwald wrote.
The Daily Wire’s Mairead McArdle reported earlier this month that the program required white, male restaurant owners to wait until applications for minority owned restaurants were processed, a wait time of three weeks that would likely see the fund depleted.
Antonio Vitolo, owner of Jake’s Bar and Grill in Harriman, Tennessee, filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration’s discriminatory program because of the wait. – READ MORE
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