In a country built on free enterprise, government contracts are supposed to go to the company that delivers the best work at the best price. That’s not some lofty ideal. It’s the basic promise every taxpayer and ratepayer deserves. Yet sprawling diversity bureaucracies have quietly rewritten those rules, sorting American business owners not by competence but by identity category — and most people have no idea how deep the rot goes.

One state has taken this arrangement to such grotesque extremes that professional satirists can’t keep up. What’s unfolding in California’s utility sector isn’t just ideological overreach. It’s a full-blown government-run identity racket dressed up in the language of inclusion.

From The Post Millennial:

A new report from the City Journal has detailed how California Democrats, through the state’s Supplier Diversity Program for utilities, have favored LGBTQ-owned businesses for utility contracts in the state.

The program, which began in 1988 and operates through the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), originally encouraged state contracts with minority-owned and women-owned businesses. It was in 2014 when then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation adding LGBT-owned businesses to the program. Five years later, under Gov. Gavin Newsom, the program was expanded while encouraging additional energy-sector companies to participate.

Read that again slowly. California has constructed an apparatus granting preferential treatment to utility contractors based on sexual orientation. If the program’s “aspirational goals” of 1.5% LGBTQ procurement are fully realized, roughly $633 million per year flows to firms selected in part because of who their owners sleep with. Not because they submitted the sharpest bid. Not because they run the tightest operation. Because they checked the right identity box.

When the state certifies your bedroom

To qualify for the LGBTQ preference, business owners must navigate a 13-item certification checklist administered by California’s Supplier Clearinghouse. Among the accepted documentation: copies of same-sex marriage certificates, evidence of “family building efforts” like IVF or surrogacy with a same-sex partner, media references to the owner’s LGBTQ identification, and letters from attorneys, physicians, or “recognized LGBT organizations” vouching for their status.

So yes — the state of California has bureaucrats evaluating whether you’re gay enough to earn a contract. Welcome to the progressive utopia.

And if a non-gay business owner fabricates their status to compete? Assembly Bill 1678, signed by Governor Brown in 2014, imposes up to a year in prison. Lie about your sexuality on a government form and you could end up behind bars. Commit actual retail theft under $950 in California and you’ll likely walk.

Kyle Mann, editor-in-chief of The Babylon Bee, nailed it: “If my writers had pitched this as a joke, I would have rejected it for being too outlandish.”

The law California voters already settled

This isn’t merely absurd. It’s almost certainly illegal. Back in 1996, California voters passed Proposition 209, explicitly banning the state from granting preferential treatment based on race, sex, or ethnicity in public employment and contracting. Progressives tried to repeal it in 2020. Voters said no. Again.

The CPUC’s clever dodge? Label everything “voluntary” and “aspirational.” Meanwhile, utilities must submit detailed demographic procurement data, file annual compliance reports, and — here’s the fun part — provide written explanations for failing to hit their identity-based targets. That’s a peculiar definition of “voluntary.”

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has now opened a DOJ inquiry into the whole arrangement. Her assessment was refreshingly blunt: “I don’t know how who somebody sleeps with is relevant to their provision of utilities-related support services. It’s nonsense, it needs to stop, and it’s illegal.”

Guess who’s paying for all this

California’s ratepayers are stuck with the tab. Every dollar funneled into identity verification processes, compliance bureaucracies, and vanity projects — San Diego Gas & Electric actually produced an animated diversity training video starring a character called the “Ambassador for Excellence,” because apparently that’s a priority when your state’s grid is held together with duct tape — is a dollar not spent on infrastructure or rate relief.

Even one of the program’s direct beneficiaries, transgender business owner Mary Ann Horton, offered a remarkably candid admission: “If I was a straight, white male, I might be concerned I don’t have the same opportunity. It worked out great for me.”

At least she’s honest about what everyone else can plainly see.

Dhillon has encouraged companies shut out of contracts to pursue private legal action, and the DOJ inquiry signals that federal pressure is mounting. Good. Because the deeper lesson here is one California’s ruling class refuses to absorb: Americans don’t want their government sorting citizens into identity hierarchies and distributing public money accordingly. They want the lights kept on — by whoever does it best, regardless of what boxes they check on some bureaucrat’s clipboard.

Key Takeaways

• California awards utility contracts based on sexual orientation, not merit or competence.
• The LGBTQ certification program likely violates Proposition 209, which voters have twice upheld.
• Ratepayers could shoulder $633 million annually in identity-based contract preferences.
• The DOJ has opened a formal inquiry into the program’s constitutionality and legality.

Sources: The Post Millennial, The Washington Times