A small-business owner in Maryland who previously served time after being convicted on drug and gun charges is suing the Small Business Administration for denying Paycheck Protection Program loans to business owners with criminal histories.

The 33-page complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, alleges the SBA is making an illegal, "moral" judgment never intended by Congress—and, in fact, directly legislated against by Congress, the suit says—by withholding the loans, which are meant to help smaller businesses survive the economic devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Plaintiff Altimont Wilks, who owns both a neighborhood convenience store and a logistics business based in Hagerstown, Maryland, is being represented by the nonprofit New Civil Liberties Alliance group. Wilks is seeking broad relief for all small-business owners nationwide with criminal records who are being turned down for PPP loans.

Wilks' lawsuit in part seeks a declaratory judgment that the "criminal history" exclusionary rule, promulgated by the SBA in the weeks after the Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES) Act in March, is contrary to the law. The action, filed Wednesday, also seeks writs of mandamus that would order the individually named defendants in the case—Trump administration Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and SBA Administrator Jovita Carranza—to "fulfill their duties to administer PPP loans to all business concerns that are eligible under the criteria set out [by the U.S. Congress] in the CARES Act."

The complaint also asks for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would quickly set aside the $31,500 in PPP loan money originally requested by Wilks while the larger legal issues raised in the complaint are decided.

The heart of Wilks' argument is that Congress purposely only set out two criteria for business eligibility for PPP loans, which can be used for everything from paying salaries to rent to group health care benefits.

The criteria, the complaints says, are simply: one, whether a borrower business was operating Feb. 15, 2020, and two, whether it had employees for whom it at the time paid salaries and payroll taxes or paid independent contractors.

Moreover, Wilks argues, the two criteria were included in a section of PPP loans-focused legislation titled, "Increased Eligibility for Certain Small Businesses and Organizations," and were thus meant "to increase in eligibility" for the PPP loans by "limit[ing] the considerations on which SBA can base eligibility for a PPP loan guarantee," he contends.

"Congress did not delegate to SBA the authority to determine who is and is not morally worthy of a PPP loan," Wilks argues in the complaint.

The complaint quotes from a decision issued May 11 in Michigan addressing an action launched by an adult-entertainment club, which had been denied a PPP CARES Act loan because of the nature of its business.

"'While Congress may once have been willing to permit the SBA to exclude these businesses from its (the SBA's) lending programs, that willingness evaporated when the COVID-19 pandemic destroyed the economy and threw tens of millions of Americans out of work,'" the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan said in that case , according to Wilks' complaint.

Continuing to quote the Michigan decision, the Wilks complaint then states, "'Simply put, Congress did not pick winners and losers in the PPP. Instead, through the PPP, Congress provided temporary paycheck support to all Americans employed by all small businesses that satisfied the two eligibility requirements—even businesses that may have been disfavored during normal times.'"

The SBA, which is a named defendant in the complaint, did not respond to a request for comment Thursday. The Treasury Department also did not respond to a request for comment.

Wilks, according to the complaint, was arrested and charged in 2004 on felony drug and weapons offenses under both Maryland and federal law.

He pleaded guilty, the action says, and served a 10-year sentence for the federal convictions and a five-year consecutive sentence for the state convictions, and he was released in June 2018.

After leaving prison, says the complaint, he "successfully transitioned back into society" and  "has become an accepted and successful member of the community since his return." The complaint says he'll complete federal supervision June 14 and will remain on parole in Maryland until 2021.

It also lists a small raft of honors he's received since opening his Carmen's Corner Store in 2019, including from his U.S. senator, U.S. congressman and from the Maryland Small Business Development Center, which, the complaint says, "saluted Carmen's Corner Store's 'efforts on the success of our nation's dreamers, innovators, and doers.'"

The SBA's interim final rules on the PPP loans program, in part, make ineligible those who are "an owner of 20% or more of the equity of the applicant is incarcerated, on probation, on parole; presently subject to an indictment, criminal information, arraignment, or other means by which formal criminal charges are brought in any jurisdiction; or has been convicted of a felony within the last five years."