According to the legal filing from the Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation, IU’s race-based scholarships reflect "a pervasive and systemic failure to comply with constitutional and statutory requirements," warranting an immediate investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR). Legal Insurrection identified at least 19 race-based scholarships at the Kelley School of Business, the McKinney School of Law, and the university’s Indianapolis campus. The organization argues that some of these scholarships use terms such as “minorities,” which reflect "a racial and/or ethnic descriptor that excludes whites." Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and activities that receive federal funding. Federal law includes colleges and universities under its definition of a “program” or “activity.” Any recipient of federal funds found guilty of discrimination can have that funding terminated or be referred to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for legal action. The court filing explains that prior case law has established that in discrimination cases, it does not matter if the recipient of federal funds sets discriminatory policy with good intentions, or if doing so might benefit a group as a whole or promote equality at the group level. The group has filed complaints against roughly 30 universities across the U.S., which has resulted in schools voluntarily changing their programming more than half the time, according to The Herald-Times. “Indeed, the Supreme Court has recognized only two interests compelling enough to justify racial classifications,” the filing states. The first is to remedy effects of past discrimination in which the government played a role, and to avoid imminent and serious risks to safety in prisons, like a race riot. “Neither applies here,” the filing explains. “Here, the race-based eligibility criteria are, by their terms, mechanically applied,” the complaint states. “If applicants do not meet the blunt racial or national-origin requirements set out above, they are either not eligible for these scholarships at all or are not ‘referred.’ Such ‘preferences’ are unlawful.” The filing adds, “Because the discriminatory scholarship eligibility criteria outlined above are presumptively invalid, and because IU cannot show any compelling government justification for those restrictions, IU’s limitation of scholarships based on race and national origin violates federal civil rights statutes and constitutional equal protection guarantees.” Legal Insurrection is requesting the Office of Civil rights to expedite its investigation of the complaint and to consider all ways to hold the university “accountable for its unlawful conduct,” including fines, suspension of federal funding, and a referral to the DOJ.An anti-discrimination group has filed a civil rights complaint against Indiana University (IU) concerning nearly two dozen race-based scholarships, alleging that they violate federal law.
