Biden’s Restaurant Relief Program Is Specifically For “Socially Disadvantaged People”

The Biden administration is segregating restaurant owners by race in prioritizing pandemic financial aid, barring white male restaurant owners from applying to a multi-billion dollar restaurant stimulus fund for three weeks, by which time the money may run out.

A lawyer said the move may be unconstitutional since the preferences are not remedying losses caused by government racial discrimination, but rather offsetting losses from a virus that ravaged the industry as a whole.

The Restaurant Revitalization Fund was established and approved this year in the Democratic $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill and began accepting applications around the country on May 3.

The $28.6 billion dollar fund is experiencing extremely high demand due to the fact that the restaurant industry was among the hardest hit during the pandemic. The Small Business Administration (SBA) announced that it will only select applications from restaurants and other eligible small businesses that are at least 51 percent owned by “women, veterans, or socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.”

Socially disadvantaged individuals are defined as “those who have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice or cultural bias because of their identity.” Economically disadvantaged individuals are defined as a subset of socially disadvantaged individuals “whose ability to compete in the free enterprise system has been impaired due to diminished capital and credit opportunities as compared to others in the same business area who are not socially disadvantaged.”

Some industry experts expect the $28.6 billion funds could run out before the initial 21 days are up.

The National Restaurant Association expressed concern that the demand for relief is so high that the money would be depleted “in a matter of weeks — possibly only a few.”

“We will continue to work with the SBA and our members to ensure the application process goes smoothly, even as we’re alerting Congress to our concerns about the limits of the current funds,” Sean Kennedy, the association’s executive vice president for public affairs, told Restaurant Dive.