Wisconsin Constitutional Amendment could severely prohibit state and local government support to Women and Minority Communities across Wisconsin
Milwaukee, WI — Recently, the Wisconsin State Assembly advanced proposed constitutional amendment Assembly Joint Resolution (AJR) 102 which, coupled with Senate Joint Resolution 94, is being promoted as a civil-rights safeguard. In reality, it threatens to constitutionalize indifference to history, economics, and lived reality —while weakening Wisconsin’s public contracting ecosystem and undermining genuine equal opportunity.
Minority-owned businesses are critical engines for Wisconsin’s economy, generating jobs, wealth, and unique community services:
- According to a report published in 2024 by the University of Wisconsin – Madison, Minority-Owned Businesses in Wisconsin contributed over $1.6 Billion in Payroll while employing approximately 54,500 to 55,000 workers in total. Despite this economic impact, the State of Wisconsin still ranks last in business ownership by people of color.
- Diverse businesses remain underrepresented in the state’s business community representing only 11 percent of businesses in 2019 while people of color constitute almost 19 percent of the state’s population.
As this data reflects, now is certainly not the time to shrink the economic pie with ill-advised, proposed constitutional amendments. On the contrary, we need to continue to move forward with policies and programs designed to expand opportunities for all qualified people and businesses – including those from diverse groups.
Diverse businesses are cornerstones of Wisconsin’s economy, and essential catalysts for Wisconsin’s growth, delivering vital products/services, creating equitable wealth, enriching communities and driving widespread economic prosperity.
The proposed measure would prohibit state and local governments from considering race or sex in public employment, education, contracting, or administration—without regard to whether such consideration is remedial, narrowly tailored, or necessary to correct demonstrable disparities. This absolutist approach is not required by the U.S. Constitution, nor is it compelled by sound conservative legal reasoning.
The National Association of Minority Contractors – Wisconsin Chapter (NAMC-WI) stands in opposition to this proposed state constitutional amendment. NAMC is the largest and oldest minority-owned construction industry trade association in the United States, established in 1969 to address the needs and concerns of minority contractors, and currently has over 22 statewide chapters across the nation, including the Wisconsin chapter.
Neutral Language, Unequal Outcomes
The amendment assumes that Wisconsin’s economic and contracting landscape is already neutral and level. It is not.
Public contracting systems did not arise in a vacuum. For decades, qualified Black-owned businesses and women-owned businesses—White women included—were formally and informally excluded from procurement pipelines through discriminatory bonding practices, restricted access to capital, closed networks, and outright exclusion. The consequences of those policies persist today in measurable, documented ways.
To prohibit the state from even modestly addressing those disparities is not neutrality. It is a decision to lock in the results of past discrimination masquerading as contemporary fairness.
“NAMC-WI, working with our statewide and national partners have increased visibility, access, and resources for Wisconsin’s local, small, diverse-owned businesses to compete equitably and create skilled jobs leading to small business development and workforce development across the region’s construction, infrastructure, and maintenance sectors increasing the state’s economic revenues and expanding the tax base”, said NAMC-WI Board President Ugo Nwagbaraocha.
“Assembly Joint Resolution 102’s proposed ban on equality initiatives poses a significant threat to erode Wisconsin’s progress, ongoing business and economic growth.”
The Supplier Diversity Program: A Measured, Lawful Response
Recent events underscore the stakes. A group of diversity opponents has filed a civil rights complaint under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, demanding an investigation into the Wisconsin Department of Administration’s Supplier Diversity Program.
That program sets a lawful, modest goal: at least 5 percent of state procurement dollars directed to certified Minority-Owned Business Enterprises.
Five percent.
That figure represents one-nineteenth (1/19) of the state’s total procurement spending. By contrast, businesses outside these programs—by any honest accounting—continue to receive 95 percent or more of public contracting dollars.
No serious constitutional analysis, conservative or otherwise, supports the notion that entities controlling the overwhelming share of public resources are victims of “reverse discrimination” when a sliver of opportunity is intentionally preserved for historically excluded participants.
Economic Consequences for Wisconsin Communities
Beyond legal theory, this amendment risks tangible economic harm.
Supplier diversity and equal access programs are not acts of charity. They are economic development tools that broaden competition, strengthen local supply chains, and circulate public dollars within communities that have long been excluded from them. Weakening or eliminating these programs will:
- Reduce the number of qualified bidders over time
- Concentrate public dollars among fewer, larger firms
- Undermine small-business economic growth across urban and rural Wisconsin
- Disproportionately harm Black-owned businesses and White women-owned businesses, the latter of which historically make up over 50 percent of participation in statewide diversity programs
These programs are not reverse discrimination; they help to provide pragmatic market correction.
Even true conservatism recognizes that equality before the law does not require willful blindness to reality. The U.S. Constitution has long permitted narrowly tailored, evidence-based remedial measures to dismantle the lingering effects of discrimination. Nothing in this proposed constitutional amendment’s text requires such measures to be outlawed – yet that is EXACTLY what it would do.
By elevating a rigid prohibition into the state constitution, Wisconsin would eliminate future legislative flexibility, ignore empirical disparities, and replace judgment with ideology.
Voters should ask a simple question before this amendment appears on the November 2026 ballot:
Does this measure expand opportunity—or does it simply preserve the status quo for those who already have it?
Equal opportunity is not achieved by pretending history never happened. It is achieved by confronting it honestly, lawfully, and prudently—so that Wisconsin’s economy works for everyone.
Wisconsin Stand Up and reject this misguided proposed constitutional amendment.
