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Constitutional Law Keyed to Choper
Adarand Constructors v. Peña
Citation:
515 U.S. 200 (1995)Facts
In 1989, the Central Federal Lands Highway Division awarded a prime contract for a highway construction project in Colorado to Mountain Gravel Construction Company. Mountain Gravel solicited bids for the guardrail portion of the contract, and Adarand Constructors submitted the lowest bid. However, Mountain Gravel awarded the subcontract to Gonzales Construction, a company certified as a disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE). Under the terms of the prime contract, Mountain Gravel received additional compensation for hiring a DBE subcontractor. Federal law required that most federal agency contracts contain a subcontracting clause providing monetary incentives to prime contractors who hired subcontractors certified as small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals. The law presumed that certain racial minorities qualified as socially and economically disadvantaged. Adarand, which was not a certified DBE, sued federal officials claiming that the race-based presumptions in the subcontractor compensation clauses violated the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
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