Alaska contracts tagged with the anti-DEI clause go almost entirely to Native corporation firms

Federal award records show that about $56 million of the $59 million in Alaska contract dollars tagged with a code tied to a new anti-DEI clause belongs to firms owned by Alaska Native corporations, and no federal agency has said whether the clause applies to the Native contracting preferences those awards were made under.

An Alaska News review found 52 awards whose federal descriptions referenced Executive Order 14398, and the set keeps growing. The records establish a connection to the order but not necessarily the contract language; Alaska News has not examined the underlying contracts to confirm each one contains the clause.

President Donald Trump signed the order on March 26. It directs agencies to insert a six-part clause into contracts and every tier of subcontract. The clause bars "racially discriminatory DEI activities," which the order defines as disparate treatment by race or ethnicity in recruitment, employment, contracting, program participation or the allocation of resources. Contractors must open books, records and accounts on demand, and the clause makes compliance material to payment decisions under the False Claims Act. Noncompliance can cancel a contract and make a firm ineligible for further federal work.

"It is therefore the policy of the United States to promote economy and efficiency in Federal contracting by preventing racial discrimination," Trump wrote in the order.

The order's text never mentions the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, Alaska Native corporations, tribes, the Buy Indian Act or the Small Business Administration 8(a) program for disadvantaged small businesses. Federal law separately classifies Alaska Native corporations and their subsidiaries as Native-owned, minority and economically disadvantaged enterprises, and SBA regulations set special 8(a) rules for businesses owned by tribes and Native corporations. That is the statutory basis for the preferences the order does not address. The only qualifier on the duty to insert the clause is the phrase "to the extent permitted by law," which appears twice.

Two Native contracting bodies asked regulators to say the preferences fall outside the order. The Native American Contractors Association, which serves more than forty Native-owned firms, asked agencies to state expressly that tribal, ANC and Native Hawaiian Organization preferences fall outside it. Without clearer distinctions, it wrote, "contracting officers and prime contractors may perceive lawful Native programs, such as the SBA 8(a) Program, as prohibited DEI activities." The group also argued the demand for access to books conflicts with Alaska corporate law, since "ANCs hold proprietary shareholder information governed by ANCSA and state corporate law."

Ho-Chunk, Inc., a tribal corporation owned by Nebraska's Winnebago Tribe, filed the same week. It pointed to an SBA rule requiring an 8(a) tribally owned firm to keep a written plan for developing tribal members' managerial skills. "Could this be misinterpreted as disparate treatment in the 'allocation or deployment' of resources?" wrote Ann Marie Bledsoe Downes, the company's chief administrative officer.

The two largest Alaska awards carrying the tag went to Goldbelt Government Services of Juneau: about $12.5 million from the Bureau of Prisons for exterior repairs at a detention center in Brooklyn, and about $11.5 million for an electrical upgrade at a penitentiary in Illinois. Both were sole-source 8(a) awards with one offer. Bering Straits Professional Services of Anchorage holds a $9.8 million CDC laboratory upgrade and a $7.1 million Bureau of Prisons award, both single-offer. Nineteen of the tagged Alaska awards, worth about $44 million, drew a single offer, and every Alaska award over $7 million with the tag was justified as other than full and open competition. Smaller tagged awards went to Tanana Commercial Company, Koniag Professional Services and Tanaq Management Services.

No public answer to the Native contractors' questions appears in the implementation materials or the comment docket. On Sept. 18, the council that writes federal contracting rules proposed adding the clause to government-wide contracting rules and making noncompliance grounds for suspension or debarment. Comments are due Oct. 19.

The public guidance defines the new anti-discrimination clause and the older Native contracting framework separately. It does not explain where one ends and the other begins.