For months as the new presidential and Gov. Mike Braun administrations announced waves of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion purges, there was a major program long embedded into state and federal contracting law that escaped mention.

The Ronald Reagan-era supplier diversity program that requires contractors on state and federal public works projects to try to hire a certain threshold of minority-owned or women-owned businesses was exempt from a new anti-DEI state law passed earlier this year, and it was not mentioned in the Braun administration's roundup of DEI references eliminated from state policies . Given the tenure of the program, one lawmaker explained, it wasn't something they wanted to cut without more discussion.

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