BRADENTON, Fla. — Seven months after Kentucky sold a major financing for its half of the $2.6 billion Ohio River Bridges Project, a contractor has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit.
A delay in approving the Disadvantaged Business Enterprises recertification for an African-American woman and her firm cost a "valuable business opportunity" to work on the bridge project in Louisville, according to the complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Kentucky.
Maureen Mathis, president of Louisville-based Mathis & Sons Inc., claims in the suit that her firm had an agreement with the lead general contractor to work on the Louisville bridge project, but "due to the protracted delay" in obtaining DBE recertification the company was told it no longer qualified for the contract.
Mathis' complaint is based on a federal law prohibiting discrimination against persons or firms based on race, color, or national origin. It names the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet and three agency employees — Shella Jarvis Eagle, Tyra Redus and Melvin Bynes — who work in the cabinet's civil rights and small business development department.
Eagle, Redus and Bynes changed an investigator's recommendation recertifying Mathis & Sons as a minority-owned firm, the suit said.
After the investigator discovered the change and rectified it, the Transportation Cabinet approved the recertification on Aug. 22, 2013, "nearly five months" after the application was submitted, said the suit. It also claimed the recertification process should have taken 30 days.
The refusal to recertify Mathis and her company "was based on defendants' racial animus toward African-Americans," and they "intentionally discriminate against African-American-owned businesses with regard to DBE certification, giving preference to a different class of minorities, namely businesses owned by white females," the complaint said.
Mathis is seeking a jury trial, and unspecified compensatory damages for economic losses and emotional distress.
"The Transportation Cabinet will file its answer to the complaint with the court at the appropriate time," said department spokesman Chuck Wolfe. "The cabinet doesn't otherwise discuss details of litigation."
Wolfe said he does not foresee the possibility that the suit could force the state to stop work on the massive project.
In December, Kentucky closed on $728 million in bonds and notes to fund a major portion of its $1.3 billion cost to rehabilitate a major bridge, and build a new one adjacent to it, between Louisville and southern Indiana.
The Louisville bridge program has received $336 million in Garvee bond proceeds backed by anticipated federal highway funds, $250 million in conventional federal highway funding, and a $452.2 million low-interest TIFIA loan through the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program.
Projects receiving federal transportation funds must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, guaranteeing that no person shall, on the grounds of race, color, or national origin, be excluded or discriminated against participating in programs that receive federal assistance.
