Unconstitutional? You bet; it'll take five-minutes for the court to strike it down. But it's the 9th circuit, so you never know

FORGET IT JAKE, IT’S CHINATOWN

Small business owner sues Oregon over its race-based Covid relief program

Earlier this year, in the response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Oregon Legislature established a $62 million relief fund that’s only available to individuals and business owners who “self-identify as Black.” These public funds are not available to Hispanic, Asian-American, Native American, or White business owners or individuals. 

This blatant racially discriminatory scheme cried out to be challenged as unconstitutional. Sure enough, it is now being challenged.

The plaintiff is Great Northern Resources, Inc., a small family-owned logging business that has suffered financially because of the pandemic. Its owner is white, and thus the business is ineligible to receive any of the public funds granted by the Oregon Legislature. 

In its suit, Great Northern Resources asserts that by distributing government benefits on the basis of race, Oregon has violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. To me, this seems self evident. 

The plaintiffs have asked the courts “to immediately freeze this unlawful program and that no additional state money be distributed until the program is expanded to all Oregonians, regardless of their skin color or ethnic heritage.”

I suppose the court could find a way around the Constitution’s prohibition against this kind of discrimination by ruling that since the law says “self-identifying as black”, whites need only self-identify as blacks, and problem solved. But the law also specifies that something called “The Black United Fund of Oregon” is responsible for managing grants to individuals from the Fund”, so that’s a thin reed to rely on. Or would be, in another circuit.

But it’s the 9th Circuit, and although Trump (and McConnell) have appointed ten judges there during trump’s term of office, to its bench, cases are assigned to judges by random draw and Obama appointees still outnumber Trump’s. Add in Bush appointees, who were named at a time when either of a state’s two Senators (far left, in Oregon’s case) could block an appointment, and the odds are in the whackos’ favor.

The Complaint filed by Great Northern Resources is available here.