A Wisconsin state appeals court ruled last week that a state grant program for minority students was unlawful and ordered it to stop distributing funds, reversing an earlier circuit court ruling that approved the grant.
The appeals court relied heavily on a broad interpretation of the Supreme Court’s ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which struck down affirmative action in admissions. In the appeal hearing, lawyers for the state argued that the SFFA decision did not apply outside of institutions’ admissions practices. The court disagreed, arguing that the ruling’s “principles appear to apply to nearly every context in which government attempts to use race, national origin, ancestry or alienage as a discriminating factor.”
The decision ends a years-long legal battle that began in 2021 when the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative public interest law group, sued the state Higher Education Aids Board alleging that the Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant discriminated against white, Asian and other “disfavored” groups. The grant requires applicants to identify as Black, Hispanic, Indigenous or Southeast Asian.
In a now-overturned circuit court ruling that dismissed WILL’s case in 2022, the court permitted the grant because it served two compelling interests: promoting campus diversity after admissions, and enhancing financial aid opportunities for students who struggled to find them.
Representatives for the HEAB declined to say whether they planned to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported.
The Wisconsin appeals court decision is an early indicator of changing legal standing for all race-based initiatives in higher education after the SFFA decision, especially race-conscious scholarships, which have been under attack in red states for the past year.
A recent Dear Colleague letter from the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights made clear that the federal government views race-based scholarships as unconstitutional and discriminatory as well, and threatened to pull federal funding from colleges that don’t eliminate them or alter their eligibility requirements.
