Pittsburgh, PA
Firm Alert
(By Alex Farone and Janet Meub)
The U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) issued an Interim Final Rule (IFR) effective October 3, 2025, instituting an immediate and significant change for the qualification of women- and minority-owned businesses in the DOT’s Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) and Airport Concessions Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (ACDBE) Program. For purposes of the DBE/ACDBE program, women- and minority-owned businesses were historically presumed to be disadvantaged, automatically meeting one of the requirements for DBE status; this is no longer the case.
What is the DBE/ACDBE program? The purpose of this longstanding program is to level the playing field for small businesses in the highway construction, transit, and airport industries, owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals, seeking to participate in federally funded contracts. Congress enacted the first statutory DBE provision in 1983, setting a goal that at least 10% of project funds be issued to DBEs on highway and transit projects. In 1987, Congress expanded the program for airport projects and concessionaries. This legislatively-mandated program was intended to ensure nondiscrimination and remove barriers in the award of DOT-assisted contracts, and thus the DOT was entrusted with oversight of the program.
Specifically, the program requires state and local transportation agencies that receive DOT grants to develop their own aspirational DBE contracting goals based on the availability of DBEs in their local markets, to meet the program targets. Notably, grantees are generally prohibited from using quotas or set-aside contracts for DBEs. (49 CFR § 26.43). They have been required to use race- and gender-neutral means to meet their goals to the extent possible, without using criteria favoring DBEs over non-DBEs (49 CFR §§ 26.5, 26.51). Examples of such neutral means are unbundling of large contracts, informational programs on contracting opportunities, and offering business support services. …