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BALTIMORE, MD – Attorney General Anthony G. Brown is leading a multistate coalition of 17 attorneys general in filing an amicus brief in Taylor v. U.S. Department of Education, supporting a federal lawsuit challenging a decision by the U.S. Secretary of Education that stripped away a long-standing federal priority for blind vendors operating military dining facilities on federal property controlled by the Department of the Army.
The Randolph-Sheppard Act, enacted in 1936, established a cooperative federal-state program giving blind vendors priority to operate food service and other vending facilities on federal property, including military installations. Through designated State Licensing Agencies, Maryland and other states recruit, train, license, and support blind vendors, generating program revenue that funds those very operations. This decades-long partnership has created pathways to stable income and promoted entrepreneurship for blind Americans.
In December 2025, the Secretary of Education published a notice in the Federal Register granting the U.S. Army a broad, Army-wide exemption from the Randolph-Sheppard Act’s priority for the placement and operation of dining facilities, based on a small number of claimed cost and performance concerns, effectively removing blind vendors from consideration for military dining contracts across the country.
“This program exists to give blind Marylanders the tools, training, and access to build thriving businesses. Dismantling it doesn’t just close doors, it tears down the whole doorway,” said Attorney General Brown. “We will not stand by while the federal government attempts to strip those opportunities away.”
In their brief, Attorney General Brown and the coalition argue that the Secretary’s decision ignores what states actually know from years of administering the program on the ground – as a whole, blind vendors have operated dining facilities efficiently and to the satisfaction of the military itself. For example, Maryland vendors at Fort George G. Meade have been recognized by the U.S. Army for exceptional performance. The coalition further argues that the cost concerns cited by the Secretary do not hold up to scrutiny. Labor and food costs at military dining facilities are largely set by federal law and military procurement systems, not vendor discretion. Issuing a sweeping, nationwide waiver based on isolated examples, while ignoring this broader context, is the kind of incomplete and selective reasoning that federal law does not permit.
The stakes extend beyond individual contracts. Military dining facilities generate revenue that states use to fund vendor training, equipment, and program administration. Losing that pipeline weakens the infrastructure that supports blind vendors statewide. More broadly, curtailing the Randolph-Sheppard priority reduces the very business opportunities Congress designed the program to protect, leaving blind residents with fewer avenues to achieve the economic independence the law has long promised.
In filing the brief, Attorney General Brown is joined by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia.
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