Missouri Governor Quietly Rescinds Minority and Women-Owned Hiring Goals

JEFFERSON CITY — Gov. Mike Parson last week rescinded 177 executive orders, some issued in the 1980s, that he deemed no longer “necessary or applicable.” It was seemingly an innocuous action, framed as an effort to clean up past governor’s orders.

But buried within the dozens of rescinded old executive orders was one that set purchasing goals for state agencies from minority- and women-owned businesses. Now some organizations worry Missouri may be opting out altogether from executive branch goals meant to encourage a certain amount of purchases from minority and women-owned contractors.

“After you comb through 177 executive orders to find out what was removed, we were very dismayed to see right in the heart of that was the removal of opportunity for people who just want a piece of the American dream,” Nimrod Chapel Jr., president of the Missouri NAACP, told the Post-Dispatch. “To do so before an election sends a clear message to what his party, the Republican party, stands for.”

Parson’s executive order, signed and announced on Oct. 23, comes a little over a year after a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case struck down race-based criteria in college admissions that has emboldened conservative litigants looking to challenge other race-based programs meant to correct for historic racial and gender barriers.

Most of the orders rescinded by Parson do seem to be aimed at removing obsolete actions based on, for instance, disaster declarations. But one of the rescinded orders, issued on Oct. 21, 2015, by former Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, set goals for state agencies to purchase 10% of goods and services from firms owned by minorities and 10% owned by women.

Former Gov. Matt Blunt, a Republican, also instituted minority purchasing requirements. One of Blunt’s old orders on the matter, superseded by Nixon’s order, was also rescinded by Parson.

In a list of reasons for Parson’s action, the governor’s office cited only “legal concerns, given recent court rulings” as the grounds for rescinding Nixon’s order.

Parson’s spokesman, Johnathan Shiflett, did not say what the governor’s legal concerns were or what recent court rulings the state was referring to. Nor did Shiflett answer directly when asked whether Missouri’s 10% purchasing goals for minority- and women-owned firms were still in force.

Instead, Shiflett sought to downplay the impact, saying in an email Missouri still has requirements in state statute to certify that businesses are actually owned by minorities or women and that it still had to develop plans “to establish a state workforce which reflects the diversity of Missouri citizens.”

“The rescission of these executive orders provides necessary flexibility for (the Missouri Office of Administration) to assess how it provide these services to the executive branch and the customers it serves,” Shiflett wrote.

David Jackson, a spokesman for the St. Louis-based African American Business and Contractors Association, worried that the state’s action could discourage even local jurisdictions from maintaining their own minority hiring goals. St. Louis, for instance, has its own minority hiring goals required for contractors and firms that receive development incentives.

“This is very, very serious when it comes to the livelihood of small black- and women-owned businesses,” Jackson said. “This is going to be very relevant with the next administration. If they see the same thing that Parson sees, these companies are in trouble.”

Parson’s reasons for repealing the order are unclear. But the move does come as lawsuits target government and private sector programs designed to benefit minority-owned businesses, litigation bolstered by the Supreme Court ruling on college admissions. Earlier this year, a judge in Texas ordered a federal agency established to help minority-owned businesses cater to all firms. And last month, an Atlanta-based venture capital firm, Fearless Fund, scrapped a program that offered early stage investment to startups owned by Black women after a lawsuit challenged it.

Rep. Kimberly-Ann Collins, D-St. Louis, said she is waiting to hear back from Parson’s office on his reasons for rescinding Nixon’s executive order on minority and women owned purchasing goals for state agencies. She said she believes the governor and his aides may be taking last year’s Supreme Court ruling into account. But she said minority- and women-owned firms “are still significantly disadvantaged in the workplace and the marketplace.”

Even when the rules were in place, Missouri didn’t always hit the 10% targets. A 2022 state report found just 5% of contract spending for services went to minority-owned firms, and 4% went to female owned businesses. Commodities contracts, a far smaller subcategory of spending, awarded 16% of its spending to minority firms, but less than 1% to women-owned firms.

Chapel, of the state NAACP, said he didn’t want to speculate what court rulings Parson was basing his order on. But he noted Missouri still has a valid disparity study posted on the website of the Missouri Office of Equal Opportunity that notes the disparities in contracting for women and minority-owned firms. Yet the state is now choosing to do nothing about those disparities, he said.

“What Missouri is doing is sending out a clear signal to anyone who has faced a barrier to participating in procurement,” Chapel said. “And that signal is: no need to apply.”