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Hello Alice is being sued for our commitment to you. Scroll down to learn more about our case. 

Elevate the American Dream

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Defend the American Dream

America First Legal (AFL), an organization led by Stephen Miller, and Jonathan Mitchell filed an alleged class action lawsuit on behalf of a White-owned trucking company and its owner against Hello Alice claiming that Hello Alice “conspired and partnered” with Progressive Insurance in administering a grant program that offered $25,000 grants to ten Black-owned small businesses to use toward the purchase of a commercial vehicle. Plaintiffs claim that Hello Alice and Progressive violated their civil rights by not making the grants available to White-owned businesses.

AFL has brought multiple suits against programs for Native American, Latino and Black small business owners based on allegations that they are racially discriminatory. These have also, in some cases, ended funding for U.S. Veteran owned businesses, such as terminating the Restaurant Revitalization Fund. 

AFL is using the lawsuit against Hello Alice to fundraise to support its efforts to attack – in their own words – “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”, which it claims are “gentle-sounding euphemisms [that] are designed to mask a brute force agenda of social engineering, Marxist dehumanization, and overt racism and sexism.”

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Elevate the American Dream

On February 7, 2024, Hello Alice submitted a motion to dismiss. See motion linked here. This lawsuit alleges that Hello Alice and Progressive Insurance Company engaged in unlawful racial discrimination by offering grants to 10 Black owned small businesses to purchase commercial vehicles.  Hello Alice strongly disagrees with the legal theory of this lawsuit, which is part of a larger strategy to attack voluntary, private-sector efforts to combat the lingering effects of racism on the American economy.  Specifically, Hello Alice’s motion raises five legal arguments: 

• The law requires a reverse-discrimination plaintiff to allege that he was treated differently because of his race.  Plaintiffs must therefore plead that, but-for the alleged Black owned requirement, they would have been eligible to receive a grant.  Plaintiffs have failed to make that threshold showing, even after attempting to add allegations to their complaint.  The grant program here included several eligibility requirements entirely unrelated to race, including the need to state a clear plan for growth based on the grant, and to meet certain revenue and employee thresholds.  Plaintiffs have not included any details about their business or how they would have used grant money had they won.  Plaintiffs therefore cannot show that the race requirement caused them to miss out on any opportunity.
• The law requires a reverse-discrimination plaintiff to allege that he was treated differently because of his race.  Plaintiffs must therefore plead that, but-for the alleged Black owned requirement, they would have been eligible to receive a grant.  Plaintiffs have failed to make that threshold showing, even after attempting to add allegations to their complaint.  The grant program here included several eligibility requirements entirely unrelated to race, including the need to state a clear plan for growth based on the grant, and to meet certain revenue and employee thresholds.  Plaintiffs have not included any details about their business or how they would have used grant money had they won.  Plaintiffs therefore cannot show that the race requirement caused them to miss out on any opportunity.
• The First Amendment does not allow Plaintiffs to use the courts to compel Hello Alice or Progressive to alter the terms of their grant program.  The express purpose of this grant program is to signal disapproval of existing racial inequalities in access to capital, and to convey the vital importance of remedying those inequalities.  Recent Supreme Court precedent makes clear that general public accommodation laws cannot be used to compel Hello Alice or Progressive to change the content of that message.
• The law that Plaintiffs have sued under does not apply to a voluntary, private-sector affirmative action program where there is an existing manifest racial imbalance.  That is exactly the situation here:  The grant program was designed to address manifest imbalances in access to capital faced by Black entrepreneurs.  That makes the program lawful under binding Supreme Court precedent.
• Finally, even if the Court concludes that Plaintiffs’ case may proceed, they have filed suit in the wrong jurisdiction.  Under the applicable terms and conditions, Plaintiffs’ case must be heard by an arbitrator or by a federal court in California.

For all of these reasons, we look forward to the District Court’s resolution of this case, and we are hopeful that it will dismiss Plaintiffs’ complaint and uphold the grant program as lawful.  

Amicus Brief

On December 20th, 2023, Southern Poverty Law Center, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Hispanic National Bar Association, and Asian Americas Advancing Justice filed an amicus brief affirming our motion to dismiss the case against us. The overarching message is clear support for Hello Alice's work to distribute small business grants to the best entrepreneurs in this country. Additionally, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has filed an amicus brief on the defense of Hello Alice and the case brought by America First Legal. It supports Hello Alice's argument that the grant in question was a bonafide affirmative action program. We are thankful to have a community of thought leaders fighting with us for equitable access to capital. Read the amicus brief here and join our fight.