Education Department Backs Away From Program for Hispanic-Serving Colleges

U.S.|Education Department Backs Away From Program for Hispanic-Serving Colleges

The Trump administration is backing away from a program that steers millions of dollars to universities that serve large numbers of Hispanic students.

Federal officials said on Friday that they would not contest a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Hispanic-serving institution program, which supports colleges where at least 25 percent of the undergraduates are Hispanic.

The program was challenged in federal court in Tennessee in June by Students for Fair Admissions, the group that successfully pushed the Supreme Court to ban race-conscious college admissions, and by the state of Tennessee. They argued that the 25-percent threshold of Hispanic students was an illegal quota.

Tennessee also argued that several of its public colleges and universities were being unfairly deprived of millions of dollars in funding because they did not meet the 25-percent threshold.

“There is no valid reason to make federal funds turn on race or ethnicity,” the complaint said. “Funds should help needy students regardless of their immutable traits, and the denial of those funds harms students of all races.”

The lawsuit was part of a swelling tide of litigation against schools, corporations and diversity programs that seek to combat a legacy of discrimination against certain races or ethnicities. And it is part of an effort by opponents of affirmative action to expand the reach of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the lawsuit which, along with a similar case against the University of North Carolina, ended affirmative action in college admissions.

The Trump administration’s decision not to fight the lawsuit was not a surprise. The administration has strongly opposed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and is ideologically aligned with the premise of the litigation. The decision was first reported in The Washington Free Beacon.

It was not immediately clear whether the government’s stance meant that the program would effectively end or might be salvaged in some way.

But Peter Lake, a law professor and director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education Law and Policy at Stetson University in Florida, suggested the move meant “that S.F.F.A. and Tennessee would get their way.”

“This is going to lead to a big shake up,” Mr. Lake said. “It’s a very clear signal to Hispanic-serving institutions that their qualification for federal funding as they understood it is at least in jeopardy with the federal government.”

Mr. Lake said he expected to see the parties to the lawsuit — Students for Fair Admissions and Tennessee on one side, and the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, and the Education Department on the other — try to reach some kind of settlement “to figure out how to make this work.”

In July, the solicitor general, D. John Sauer, wrote in a letter that the Justice Department would not defend the constitutionality of certain provisions of the law pertaining to Hispanic-serving institutions. The letter was addressed to Mike Johnson, the speaker of the House.

The department had determined that the requirement for a 25-percent Hispanic student body violated the Fifth Amendment, and went against the Supreme Court decision in the Harvard case. That decision made “clear that the government lacks any legitimate interest in differentiating among universities” based on whether a certain number of seats in each class are occupied by individuals “from the preferred ethnic groups,” the letter said.

Leaders of Hispanic-serving institutions said on Friday that the program was a badly needed source of funding for colleges and universities that have been traditionally underfunded, and that serve needy students of all races and ethnicities.

“We’re trying to be an institution of access,” said Cynthia Larive, chancellor of the University of California, Santa Cruz. Many of her students are the first in their families to attend college, low income or the children of agricultural workers, whose education is important not just to them but also to the future of American society, she said.

“This is a broader issue,” she said. “It’s really about how the U.S. is going to be a leader economically and in science and research. There are smart people across the country, and we don’t alway serve all of them equally well.”

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities has 371 members that qualify as Hispanic-serving institutions, ranging from large public universities like Arizona State University to small community colleges.