A federal judge has struck down the race-based portion of the City of Houston’s Minority, Women and Small Business Enterprise Program, ruling that it violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
U.S. District Judge David Hittner issued the ruling Tuesday in a lawsuit brought by two Spring-based landscaping companies, Landscape Consultants of Texas and Metropolitan Landscape Management, both owned by Jerry and Theresa Thompson.
The judgment declares the program’s racially discriminatory provisions unconstitutional and bars the city from administering the race-conscious portion of the program or applying similar racial preferences to future public contracts. The same ruling applies to a parallel program run by the Midtown Management District, a city-affiliated entity whose leadership is appointed by the mayor and city council.
The Thompsons filed suit in September 2023, months after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. According to Reuters reporting, Hittner’s decision marks the first time that Supreme Court precedent has been applied to a municipal contracting program rather than a university admissions policy.
The judge, appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, found that Houston could not point to specific, documented instances of past discrimination that would justify treating contractors differently based on race, a standard the city needed to meet to keep the program intact.
The Thompsons argued their company, which employs a mostly Hispanic workforce, was shut out of contracts specifically because its owners are white. Court filings state that Landscape Consultants was required to subcontract 11 percent of a $1.3 million city contract, roughly $143,000, to a minority-owned firm despite being capable of doing the work itself. Competing minority-owned firms faced no such requirement.
Houston has run the program is some form since 1984. In fiscal year 2025, the city awarded about $2.5 billion in contracts, with $579 million going to businesses certified under the program across more than 1,600 separate awards. Of that $579 million, Hispanic-owned firms received 34 percent, Asian-owned firms 22 percent, white women-owned firms 17 percent, and Black-owned firms 14 percent.
City Attorney Arturo Michel said in a statement Tuesday night that Houston will comply with the ruling as it applies to existing and recently awarded contracts while the city considers an appeal. Michel noted the court relied on recent Supreme Court precedent and said the ruling does not affect the city’s other small business or women-owned business initiatives.
Erin Wilcox, senior attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the Thompsons free of charge, said the ruling affirms that government contracts should be awarded on merit rather than the race of a business owner.
The Pacific Legal Foundation has a similar lawsuit pending against Harris County over its own minority contracting program, adopted in 2020.
