Orange County commissioners on Tuesday formally went ahead with suspending the county’s decades-old minority and women business enterprise program, citing anti-DEI orders from the federal government as the reason for why doing so was a necessity.
Executive orders issued by the Trump administration in January, targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, include a requirement that recipients of grant funding from federal agencies “certify that they do not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate federal anti-discrimination laws.”
The county’s legal team is concerned that continuing to operate a program that serves to help uplift minority-run businesses could run afoul of that — and potentially forfeit the county’s share of federal funding. According to Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, the county receives more than $100 million in recurring grants each year from the federal government, plus hundreds of millions of dollars more in non-recurring grants to support the county’s operations…