Obama Presidential Center: DEI-linked firm's racial lawsuit blasted as baseless 'smears'

Yahoo

07-03-2025

FIRST ON FOX: An engineering firm working on the Obama Presidential Center says that claims it racially discriminated against a Black-owned subcontractor on the project are baseless and amount to smears – and that simply criticizing the subcontractors' work does not amount to racism.
Thornton Tomasetti, a New York-City-based structural engineering firm, was responding to an explosive $40.75 million lawsuit accusing it of acting with racist intent when it criticized the alleged underperformance of a Black-owned concrete subcontracting firm at the sprawling 19.3-acre site at Chicago's Jackson Park.
The lawsuit has drawn national attention to the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) goals underpinning the project, which has been plagued by delays and costs ballooning from an initial $350 million to $830 million. The center aims to honor the political career of former President Barack Obama and will consist of a 235-foot tower museum, a branch of the Chicago Public Library and conference facilities, among other amenities.
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Thornton Tomasetti previously told the Obama Foundation, the non-profit which oversees the project, that a multitude of issues, including cracked concrete and exposed rebar by the subcontractor, led to corrective work and that the subcontracting firm was inexperienced and "questionably qualified."
The subcontracting firm, II In One Concrete, said the criticism amounted to racial bias and filed the $40.75 million lawsuit to recoup the cost of the extra work it had to carry out following requests by Thornton Tomasetti.
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In a motion to dismiss filed on Tuesday, Thornton Tomasetti said the lawsuit smeared it as racist "without a shred of factual support" and said that II In One Concrete leaned on its minority status to make the claims.
The center set out DEI goals for its construction contracts, with 35% of subcontractors required to be minority-owned. II In One was one of three firms that together made up a 51% minority-led joint-venture team.
"Plaintiffs… are not immune from having their work scrutinized simply because they are minority-owned, or because the project prioritizes using the services of minority-owned businesses," attorneys for Thornton Tomasetti wrote. "Instead, they are entitled to be treated like any other subcontractor, with all the run-of-the-mill disagreements and disputes that accompany enormous projects like this one."
"Professional criticism, without more, is not racism."
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II In One Concrete's lawsuit stems from a memorandum Thornton Tomasetti wrote to the Obama Foundation about a year ago claiming that II in One — and the contracting firms it teamed up with on the project — were responsible for numerous construction challenges during the project.
In the memo, Thornton Tomasetti pinned the blame on the subcontractors and wrote that the purpose of the memo was to defend their own services. It oversees structural engineering and design services at the site.
II In One Concrete's lawsuit claims the Obama Foundation relied on the memo for not paying the subcontracting firms around $40.75 million for "additional costs incurred," which emanated from the corrective work and put II In One Concrete on the verge of bankruptcy.
II In One Concrete's owner, Robert McGee, who is Black, argues II In One was discriminated against "on the basis of race" and that plaintiffs were "subjected to unjustified and discriminatory conduct… which directly undermined the Obama Foundation's DEI goals and commitments."
McGee claims Thornton Tomasetti falsely accused II in One of lacking sufficient qualifications and experience to perform its work, while stating that non-minority-owned contractors were sufficiently qualified.
McGee's lawsuit points to II in One's 40-year track record in the industry and its completion of major Chicagoland projects. McGee claims that Thornton Tomasetti changed standards and imposed new rules around rebar spacing and tolerance requirements that differed from industry standards.
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In Tuesday's motion to dismiss, Thornton Tomasetti argued that the rebar spacing requirements were part of the bid documents and contract specifications. Additionally, Thornton Tomasetti said that there were a wide range of other issues it had identified in the memo which the lawsuit did not address.
"And while plaintiffs' allegations fixate on the rebar splice specifications, they ignore the broader picture – TT (Thornton Tomasetti) flagged numerous other critical work deficiencies in the memo, none of which plaintiffs acknowledge, let alone refute," Tuesday's filing reads. "Plaintiffs cannot simply pluck one of TT's many criticisms of their work and hoist it up as self-evident discrimination, while staying silent on the panoply of other problems TT set forth in the memo."
Thornton Tomasetti wrote that the complaint — accusing it of racial bias, libel and tortious interference with contract — is "fatally flawed" and must be dismissed.
"Plaintiffs fail to allege facts that plausibly paint a picture of racism (there are no alleged racist comments, no observed racial bias, and no facts showing discriminatory treatment), but also because they concede that Thornton Tomasetti's actions were motivated –– not by any harbored discrimination – but by a desire to professionally defend their services in the face of critiques levied against them in the first place," the motion to dismiss reads.
"The complaint should be dismissed and the door shut on plaintiffs' outrageous proposition that minority-owned businesses are exempt from scrutiny, critique, or the need to comply with project specifications, however 'burdensome.'"
Fox News Digital reached out to the Obama Foundation and a representative for McGee for comment but did not receive a response.
The Obama Foundation previously told Fox News Digital that it is not a party to the lawsuit and insisted that it would not cause any delays in the concrete work, which it says has already been largely completed.
"If the Foundation believed that any vendor was acting with a racist intent, we would immediately take appropriate action," Emily Bittner, the vice president of communications at the Obama Foundation, told Fox News Digital in a statement recently. The foundation has not responded to requests for information on the updated cost of the project.
The Obama Presidential Library is expected to open some time next year and will also house digitized documents from former President Obama's time in office, a gymnasium and a regulation-sized NBA court. It will also house the Obama Foundation.
The center is privately funded and will not be considered an official presidential library like other presidential libraries run by the National Archives and Records Administration system. The move gives the foundation greater flexibility around its size, designs and public spaces.
The Obama Presidential Library is currently located in Hoffman Estates in northwest Chicago. The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency has terminated the lease at the site, although it is already expected to close later this year and move to College Park in Maryland.Original article source: Obama Presidential Center: DEI-linked firm's racial lawsuit blasted as baseless 'smears'