Opinion ID: 209534
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Other Statistical Evidence

Text: The district court considered statistics presented by USCCR Commissioner Michael Yaki in his dissent to a September, 2005 USCCR study titled “Federal Procurement After Adarand.” For example, the district court noted that although the revenue of minority-owned businesses grew by sixty percent between 1992 and 1997, more than the rate of growth for all United States firms, “the revenue of African American-owned firms grew only half as much as minority-owned businesses generally, and less than all U.S. firms.” Rothe VI, 499 F. Supp. 2d at 865. The court also noted that “[m]inority-owned firms with paid employees were much less likely to survive from 1997 to 2001 than from 1992 to 1996,” and that “African American-owned enterprises were less likely to survive than other groups in either period.” Id. Although this data is national in scope and is therefore in a sense more probative of nationwide discrimination than are municipal disparity studies, the data from Commissioner Yaki’s dissent dates to the early 1990’s. Thus, as the district court recognized, this data is not by itself highly probative of the state of affairs at the time of the 2006 reenactment of Section 1207. See id. at 865 n.107 (“The Court finds that this statistical evidence is not 2008-1017 40 categorically stale, but it is less probative of present-day discrimination than the six state and local disparity studies previously discussed.”). The district court also referred to studies beyond the six disparity studies discussed above, but only in quoting speeches made by members of Congress. For example, in a July 2005 speech made to support the Department of Transportation’s disadvantaged business program, Senator Kennedy stated that “studies completed since 1998 show that minority and women-owned companies are underutilized in government contracting,” and listed studies identified by the Department of Transportation that he alleged show[] significant disparities between the availability and utilization of minority and women-owned firms in government contracting . . . in Nebraska; in Maryland; in Colorado; in Georgia; in Kentucky; in Ohio; in Wilmington, DE; in Dekalb County, GA; in Broward County, FL; in Dallas, TX; in Cincinnati, OH; in Tallahassee, FL; and in Baltimore, MD. Rothe VI, 499 F. Supp. 2d at 869 n.114 (quoting 151 Cong. Rec. S9442-02, at S9443 (Jul. 29, 2005)). These studies themselves, however, are not in the record here, and are not even sufficiently described in this floor excerpt for us to locate them, let alone subject them to “detailed, skeptical, non-deferential analysis.” See Rothe III, 262 F.3d at 1321. Likewise, the district court quoted floor speeches given by Representatives Watt and Menendez in December of 2005, in which they cited, respectively, to “a 2004 disparity study for North Carolina that was performed by MGT America,” and “a New Jersey disparity study by MGT America,” and in which these Representatives concluded that these disparity studies demonstrated underutilization of minority contractors. Rothe VI, 499 F. Supp. 2d at 869. These studies are not in the record, and we cannot defer to Representatives Watt and Menendez about the studies’ probative value, particularly in 2008-1017 41 light of our concerns about the Virginia study by MGT of America discussed above. See Adarand VII, 228 F.3d at 1167 (“We cannot merely recite statements made by members of Congress alleging a finding of discriminatory effects and the need to address those effects . . . .”). We conclude that the remaining statistics cited by members of Congress in the floor speeches quoted by the district court cannot serve as the foundation of a “strong basis in evidence,” because they are not sufficiently probative of nationwide discrimination against the range of minority groups afforded a presumption under Section 1207. Nor are the statistics quoted by the district court from the three SBA reports sufficient, because they do not account for firm size or qualifications. See, e.g., Rothe VI, 499 F. Supp. 2d at 871 (noting that the 2000 State of Small Business Report “found that minority-owned businesses ‘make [up] 9 percent of the business population of the United States, but small minority-owned businesses won just 6 percent of the award dollars in FY 1998 and 1999’”).