Edward Blum founded the American Alliance for Equal Rights and Students for Fair Admissions.
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A new lawsuit argues the Hispanic Scholarship Fund—a nonprofit that says it has provided more than $756 million in scholarships over its 50-year history—is illegally restricting its funding to Hispanics and Latinos. The litigation seeks to bar HSF “from knowing or considering ethnicity in any way” in its Scholars Program.
HSF, which didn’t return requests for comment Thursday, says on its website that it provides $500 to $5,000 scholarships, among other benefits, to 10,000 students annually.
The American Alliance for Equal Rights filed the suit Wednesday against HSF in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, saying it has non-Hispanic members “who are ready and able to apply for HSF’s program but cannot because of their ethnicity.” Two such unnamed members are Asian American and white, the group said.
“The program bans Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans that aren’t Hispanic,” the American Alliance notes. “But it welcomes whites that are.”
To make its case that the ethnic restriction is illegal, the American Alliance is using a law passed during the Reconstruction era that bans racial discrimination in contracts. And it’s alleging that HSF is entering into contracts with scholarship applicants.
“The HSF Scholars Program is a contract that offers applicants a chance at a lucrative scholarship if they agree to HSF’s terms, assent to its privacy policy, draft several essays, and sign a binding pledge,” the suit says. It goes on to allege that HSF’s terms of use, which applicants must agree to, specifically say, “This is a contract between you and HSF.”
Opening up such “contracts” only to Hispanics and Latinos violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits racial discrimination in contracts, the suit argues.
It’s another example of how the campaign against affirmative action and programs that specifically benefit minorities didn’t end with the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court ruling, which rendered affirmative action in college admissions illegal. The American Alliance was founded by the same man, Edward Blum, who created Students for Fair Admissions, the nonprofit that’s the namesake of the 2023 ruling.
It’s also another example of a suit that uses an Asian plaintiff and a Reconstruction-era law to attempt to open up a minority-specific scholarship to all races and ethnicities. Earlier this year, the Pacific Legal Foundation cited the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, which Congress passed to protect African Americans, to attack a financial aid program that helped only Black students at the University of California, San Diego.
That conservative nonprofit law firm sued on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, which said it had multiple “Asian-American high school members who plan to apply to UCSD” and who could’ve been excluded. Before that case reached a hearing, the nonprofit philanthropy that administered the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund announced the fund was being renamed.
Blum told Inside Higher Ed on Thursday that the American Alliance filed its first suit after his other group’s 2023 victory. He estimated it’s filed about 20 more since then.
“There are tens of thousands of students who are affected by race-exclusive scholarship funds, fellowships, internships, things along those lines,” Blum said. “And so it is the mission of the American Alliance for Equal Rights to challenge these racially exclusive programs and policies.”
In the current case, Blum said, “The race exclusivity of this scholarship fund was brought to our attention by a young Asian American student” of “modest financial background.”
“This nation cannot remedy past discrimination with new discrimination, and I think the vast percentage of Americans agree with that,” Blum said.
