When approaching a presidential election, regardless of who is in the White House, many regulations are finalized in the spring before the election. This is done to avoid the "look back" period of the Congressional Review Act, which allows the next congress and president to invalidate regulations passed later in the election year. This spring was no different, and the administration finalized many regulations, including a highly anticipated final rule from the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) on Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (DBE).

The new DBE rule (49 CFR 23, 49 CFR 26) arose, in part, from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 (IIJA), more colloquially known as the bi-partisan infrastructure bill. The IIJA, in addition to reauthorizing the DBE program, included many directives pertaining to administration of the DBE program. Regulations were necessary to enact the statutory directives. Further, because DBE obligations flow down to recipients of IIJA funds, such as states and municipalities, those receiving IIJA funds needed to understand how they should implement and apply the IIJA provisions applicable to DBEs.