On Wednesday, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., filed a significant anti-discrimination lawsuit against the United States Department of Education and its discriminatory Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) program. The HSI program provides substantial federal funding for needy students only to colleges and universities that have a student body comprised of 25% or more Hispanic students.
“A federal grant system that openly discriminates against students based on ethnicity isn’t just wrong and un-American—it’s unconstitutional,” said Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. “In SFFA v. Harvard, the Supreme Court ruled that racially discriminatory admissions standards violate the law, and the HSI program’s discriminatory grant standards are just as illegal. Treating people differently because of their skin color and ancestry drags our country backwards. The HSI program perversely deprives even needy Hispanic students of the benefits of this funding if they attend institutions that don’t meet the government’s arbitrary quota.”
By law, the HSI grant program is solely available to institutions of higher education that have “an enrollment of undergraduate full-time equivalent students that is at least 25 percent Hispanic students at the end of the award year immediately preceding the date of application.” This rule leaves many needy students out in the cold. The University of Memphis, for example, is ineligible for the grant despite its 61% minority enrollment because its student body is insufficiently diverse according to the federal government’s arbitrary requirement.
Chief Justice John Roberts unequivocally articulated in SFFA v. Harvard that “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.” Tennessee’s Office of the Attorney General and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. echo that same fundamentally American principle throughout this lawsuit. The plaintiffs ask the court to end the HSI program’s nonsensical, divisive, and discriminatory requirement and declare the limitation on access unconstitutional.
You can read a filed copy of the lawsuit here.
