out that the regulations in Adarand, like the Commission’s regulations here, “did not require or obligate” private entities to adopt a racial preference, but merely “provided a financial incentive to bidding contractors to grant such a preference.” 154 F.3d at 491. “Nonetheless,” according to the panel, “the Supreme Court treated the regulations as a racial classification, and did not even pause to consider the suggestion that the absence of a compelled racial preference makes strict scrutiny inapposite.” Id. In Adarand, however, the core of the equal protection challenge was not that the system of bonuses provided an incentive for prime contractors to grant a racial preference in subcontracting, but that the bonuses directly put minority-owned subcontractors in ¶¶ 13-17 (1990) (<HOLDING>) (citation omitted). Because minority hiring is
holding that almost a year between plaintiffs eeo activity and the adverse employment decision is too great a length of time to support an inference of reprisal holding that the trier of fact must consider the length of time and manner of use of trade dress the nature and extent of its use and efforts made in order to promote a conscious connection in the publics mind between the mark and the particular source of origin holding that three to five months is a short enough time lapse between eeo activity and reprisal to establish a causal connection holding that crackpowder disparity was constitutional stating that ujntil the en banc court of this circuit the us supreme court or congress itself accepts this assertion of disparity and finds it untenable challenges to the sentencing guidelines based on the disparity between sentences for crack cocaine and powder cocaine will continue to fail holding that station complied with eeo rule despite statistical disparity between new minority hires and minorities in local labor force and declaring that failing to meet the commissions processing guidelines does not in and of itself demonstrate the inadequacy of a licensees eeo efforts the commission instead focuses on a stations overall efforts to recruit hire and promote minorities