DEI programs cost Atlanta airport tens of millions in federal grants
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was due to receive just over $57 million in Federal Aviation Administration grant dollars before the end of the fiscal year this month.
The money was for restroom rehabilitation, taxiway pavement replacement, grants related to sustainability and lowering emissions, and other projects.
But after airport leaders refused to sign new grant language mandated by the Trump administration requiring all federal funding recipients to disavow their “diversity, equity and inclusion” programs, Atlanta forfeited access to that FAA money, documents obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution show. About $37.5 million of it has been permanently lost, an FAA spokesperson confirmed.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told the AJC last week his team was weighing whether to make changes to its vaunted minority contracting and inclusion programs so the city could continue to access crucial federal money across its departments.
But it appears tens of millions have already slipped through Atlanta’s fingers while it was considering the decision.
Like all American airports, federal funding is key to Hartsfield-Jackson’s largest capital improvement and infrastructure projects. The ongoing expansion of Concourse D, for example, is leveraging $40 million in U.S. DOT grants.
In a statement, Dickens spokesman Michael Smith told the AJC the city is confident the airport “will be able to pursue alternative funding to advance these projects without impacting customers or airport service providers.”
“Federal funding for the airport, while important, represents less than 10%, approximately $1 billion over the next 6 years, of the airport’s total capital program over the same period,” Smith said. Atlanta is “currently evaluating all options to ensure alignment with our long-held values, local policy, and federal law and we are confident that the airport will be well positioned to receive federal funds in the future.”
Delta Air Lines, the airport’s largest tenant and its leading construction funder, declined to comment.
According to the agency, more than $19 million will remain available to Atlanta in fiscal year 2026, if it opts to sign the agreement next time.
The airport already received a $10.6 million grant for airfield improvements earlier this year, according to the FAA’s website.
‘The City cannot sign’
In January, President Donald Trump signed an executive order requiring all who do business with or receive money from the government agree not to “operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”
In April, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent a letter to all recipients of federal transportation dollars underlining this point.
Anyone who receives money from the DOT, which oversees the FAA, is “prohibited from engaging in discriminatory actions” based on “race, color, national origin, sex or religion,” he wrote.
Based on the Supreme Court’s decision banning affirmative action in college admissions, he argued, any program “designed to achieve so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion,’ or ‘DEI,’ goals, presumptively violates Federal law.”
“Adherence to your legal obligation is a prerequisite for receipt of DOT financial assistance,” he said.
Paragraphs to this effect were inserted into the FAA’s fiscal year 2025 grant template for all recipients.
In May, some of Atlanta’s peers, including New York City, San Francisco and Boston, opted to sue the administration over the issue. Denver, Minneapolis and others joined the lawsuit shortly thereafter.
A temporary court order has protected those municipalities’ programs in the short term.
But according to correspondence between the FAA and Atlanta airport leader Ricky Smith reviewed by the AJC, Hartsfield-Jackson pushed back on the FAA and tried to modify that template to exclude the DEI language.
In response, an FAA official wrote to the airport — which is a department of the city of Atlanta — that the agency “cannot accept modifications to standard federal grant offers/agreements.”
FAA’s Atlanta airport District Office Manager Parks Preston gave Atlanta a deadline of Aug. 1 to agree to the terms or forfeit its fiscal year 2025 funding.
On July 29, Smith emailed Preston saying, “The City is able and willing to accept grant funds in accordance with federal law. However, the City cannot sign a grant offer and agreement requiring the City to agree to the newly included DEI and certain other provisions.
“We ask that your office accept the submitted applications and forward the grant offers and agreements to the City,” he said.
On Aug. 1, Preston replied that as a result, the agency would not be able to distribute $57 million to Atlanta.
The FAA declined to answer a question from the AJC about whether other American airports have also lost funding for this reason.
About the Author
As a business reporter, Emma Hurt leads coverage of the Atlanta airport, Delta Air Lines, UPS, Norfolk Southern and other travel and logistics companies. Prior to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she worked as an editor and Atlanta reporter for Axios, a politics reporter for WABE News and a business reporter for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
