The Equal Protection Project has filed a civil rights complaint against Minnesota State University Moorhead, alleging that a quintet of scholarships offered by the school are racially discriminatory in nature.
The organization filed its complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in Chicago on June 11. Within its complaint, the Equal Protection Project alleges that, “The number and scope of these discriminatory programs reflects a systemic discrimination problem at MSUM, and we urge OCR to prioritize its review and promptly open an investigation and take action.”
Among the scholarships listed in the complaint, the Access, Opportunity & Success Scholars Diversity Scholarship “is available to new freshman or new transfer students who are ‘from an underrepresented or underserved population,’ which, according to MSUM, means that they ‘identify as African American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Hispanic/Latino.’”
The other scholarships include the Earl, Violette and Louise Warner Diversity Scholarship, “exclusively awarded ‘to students who are of Mexican-American descent,’” the Joseph Thorman Hispanic Scholarship for “full-time, Hispanic students from South Texas,” the MSUM Diversity Scholarship for “students from an underrepresented or underserved population who identify as African American/Black, American Indian/Alaska Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, and/or Hispanic/Latino and are U.S. Citizens or Permanent Residents,” and the ODI Diversity Scholarship which applies to the same demographic.
According to the complaint, “MSUM violates Title VI by conditioning eligibility for the foregoing scholarships on race, national origin and skin color. Because MSUM is a public institution, its offering and administering of the scholarships listed here also violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
The Equal Protection Project cited the 2023 Supreme Court case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which declared, “distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry [and race] are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.”
The Equal Protection Project, founded by Cornell clinical law professor William Jacobson, has filed more than 25 civil rights complaints since February 2023. He noted that over half of these complaints have been resolved internally by the schools, either by modifying the programs to meet civil rights guidelines or by dissolving the program entirely. Jacobson characterized the programs as originating from Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) ideology, of which “the overarching theme is to exclude or diminish some people and promote others, based on race, color, or ethnicity.”
Evan Poellinger
Evan Poellinger, the Alpha News Summer 2024 Journalism Fellow, is a native Minnesotan with a lifelong passion for history and politics. He previously worked as a journalism intern with the American Spectator and an investigative journalism fellow with the Media Research Center. He is a graduate of College of the Holy Cross with degrees in political science and history.
