Group sues IU over scholarships, claims racial discrimination
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A group that touts itself as devoted to the fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity has filed a civil rights complaint against Indiana University over what it describes as the university’s offering of “discriminatory” scholarships.
The Equal Protection Project filed the complaint, which is posted on its website, July 15 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in Chicago.
The 14-page complaint lists at least 19 race-based scholarships at the Kelley School of Business, the IU Indianapolis campus and the McKinney School of Law
“For some of the scholarships terms such as ‘minorities’ or variations on that term are used. It is clear from the context of the scholarships and the usage of such terms by Indiana University that these terms reflect a racial and/or ethnic descriptor that excludes whites,” the EPP complaint reads.
In the complaint, EPP argued that in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harv. Coll., 600 U.S. 181 (2023), the U.S. Supreme Court declared that “[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it …. The guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color. If both are not accorded the same protection, then it is not equal.”
Following the SCOTUS ruling, Students for Fair Admissions issued a statement that called the decision a “restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation.”
“The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws,” part of the statement read.
The complaint further alleges that since IU is a public institution, its creation, sponsorship and promotion of discriminatory scholarships also violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Universities and law schools have tried to maintain a balance between the Supreme Court opinion and maintaining diversity efforts since the 2023 ruling.
William A. Jacobson, president of Legal Insurrection Foundation and founder of the Equal Protection Project, said EPP has no specific plans for further litigation against Indiana University regarding these scholarships, but if additional discriminatory scholarships or programs come to its attention, the group would consider additional actions.
“We received an anonymous tip that there was a pervasive discrimination problem at IU regarding scholarhips. After our own independent research, we documented the problem. We filed the complaint because the scholarships are discriminatory on their face, and because the number of discriminatory scholarships indicated to us a systemic disregard at IU for anti-discrimination laws and IU’s own non-discrimination policies,” Jacobson said in an email to Indiana Lawyer.
Jacobson said as far as other universities, EPP expects to continue to file complaints if and when discriminatory scholarships and programs come to the group’s attention.
Mark Bode, IU’s executive director for media relations, also responded to Indiana Lawyer via email, noting that IU does not comment on individual complaints.