Obama Presidential Library Contractor Alleges Racial Discrimination In Lawsuit

February 2, 2025
This latest lawsuit follows an already yearsl-ong pause in the construction of the Obama Presidential Library.
A federal lawsuit filed in January by Robert McGee, the owner of II in One, a Black-owned company located on Chicago’s South Side, accused Thornton Tomasetti, a New York-based engineering company and the company entrusted with providing professional design services for the Obama Presidential Library, of racial discrimination.
According to The Chicago Tribune, McGee and II in One alleges that Thornton Tomasetti’s actions left his company exposed to $40 million in debt and at risk of bankruptcy.
This, the lawsuit claims, stemmed from the latter’s “improper and unanticipated decision” to create new rules around rebar spacing and tolerance requirements, which McGee alleged placed his company under “excessively rigorous and unnecessary inspection,” as well as extraneous paperwork which “impacted productivity and resulted in millions in losses.”
In addition to these claims, McGee alleges that the professional design services company engaged in racial discrimination by singling out his company for their errors while “stating the non-minority-owned contractors were sufficiently qualified,” which McGee alleges caused “extreme financial loss and reputational harm” for his company.
This latest lawsuit follows an already years-long pause in the construction of the Obama Presidential Library while the library weathered separate challenges to the plans to build in a public park.
This resulted in the opening of the museum portion of the library to be pushed back to 2026, while the athletic center remains scheduled for a 2025 opening.
According to The Wall Street Journal, the continued delays to the Obama Presidential Library has resulted in a dubious record for the center, marking a modern record for the longest time between the end of a presidency and the opening of an associated presidential library.
Obama Foundation spokesperson Emily Bitter said in a Jan. 30 email to The Chicago Tribune that they currently have no reason to believe the company entrusted with overseeing the construction of the Obama Presidential Library has engaged in racist actions.
“If the Foundation believed that any vendor was acting with a racist intent, we would immediately take appropriate action. We have no reason to believe that Thornton Tomasetti acted with racist intent,” Bitter said via email.
Neither attorneys for II in One and the Concrete Collective joint venture, which counts II in One as a member, nor Thornton Tomasetti’s lawyers gave comments to The Chicago Tribune.
According to the lawsuit, Concrete Collective submitted a “request for equitable adjustment” in May 2023, but was rejected due to what they described as Thornton Tomasetti’s “defamatory and discriminatory statements,” which resulted in the Collective self-funding approximately $41 million worth of work.
Per their lawsuit, the larger company’s “unfair” and false accusations that II in One lacked “sufficient qualifications” despite their previous experience on projects for Millennium Park, McCormick Place, Midway and O’Hare airports, and Wrigley Field, among other high-profile projects, led to the Obama Foundation’s denial of the additional coverage of construction costs.
This, the lawsuit alleges, “directly undermined the Obama Foundation’s DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) goals and commitments and mission to bring transformative change to the construction industry and local community.”
According to Newsweek, the center has more broadly been embroiled in controversy regarding the library’s participation in the gentrification of the South Side of Chicago and particularly the area surrounding Chicago’s historic Jackson Park.
Barack and Michelle Obama attended the groundbreaking ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago. Construction on the presidential library began last month after five years of legal battles, gentrification concerns and a federal review. pic.twitter.com/C5arKhOVZT
The resulting controversies and legal protests have resulted in a nearly 10-year gap between the unveiling of the plans for the lawsuit, which occurred in 2017, and the opening of the center, which as previously stated, is scheduled for 2026.
In 2017, when plans were first announced, the center was supposed to have a budget of $500 million, but has since ballooned to a reported cost of more than $830 million.
The Obama Presidential Library is also connected to the former President’s post-White House life, which, in the aftermath of Trump’s first occupancy of the White House, Obama was criticized for seemingly trying to depoliticize deeply political issues.
“We got into the weakest position in decades through Obama’s attempt to live in a post-partisan world that doesn’t exist,” Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of the left-leaning advocacy group Democracy for America, told Vox. “[Obama] should be doing exactly what everyone else in the Democratic Party should be doing: following the resistance, fighting back against Trump, or getting out of the way.”
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