This startup just scored a huge DEI legal victory over Trump adviser Stephen Miller

by NANCY SCOLA

IMAGE/ sergeitokmakov/Pixabay, Kent Nishimura/Getty Images

Miller’s legal group had sued Hello Alice for a grant program aimed at Black business owners—a judge just ruled to dismiss.

A federal judge has tossed out a case brought by the Stephen Miller-backed America First Legal against a small Texas company as part of what the nonprofit calls its effort to “dismantle the DEI industrial complex.” America First Legal quickly filed notice with the court saying it would appeal the judge’s ruling. 

In August, America First Legal sued Hello Alice, an online platform for entrepreneurs, over the firm’s administration of ten $25,000 grants limited to Black-owned businesses, in partnership with the insurance giant Progressive. The case has garnered attention because it could dramatically limit the business world’s use of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that have gained traction in recent years. 

In legal filings, America First Legal, aka AFL, has argued that the grants amounted to illegal racial discrimination in violation of federal civil rights law. Hello Alice, meanwhile, has argued that the program was a First Amendment-protected corrective to exactly the sort of disparities in the startup landscape the company was founded in 2015 to address.  

The judge, Patricia A. Gaughan of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, ruled on far narrower, more prosaic grounds. AFL brought the case on behalf of Nathan Roberts, a white Ohioan who objected to being ineligible for the contested grants. Gaughan found that Roberts lacked the necessary standing in the suit, in part because he had not argued that he would have received one of the grants under race-neutral criteria. 

“Plaintiffs fail to allege any injury in fact that would support their standing to seek either retrospective or prospective relief,” wrote Gaughan. Gaughan also noted that because the Progressive-backed grant program had wrapped, Roberts was not eligible for future remedies. 

Progressive, for its part, noted in its own court filings that it “does not plan to sponsor grants in the future that include race- or other demographic-based eligibility criteria.”

Hello Alice is calling the ruling a major win. 

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