The U.S. Department of Education has agreed to revise “the exclusionary race-based eligibility rules of a federal student scholarship program, resolving a lawsuit filed against the program,” reports The College Fix.
“That means the McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program–a federal program distributing roughly $60 million annually to help students pursue graduate education–will no longer discriminate based on race,” stated Young America’s Foundation, which had sued the Biden administration two years ago over the program.
The lawsuit objected to the fact that the program excluded whites, Asians, Arabs, and Middle Easterners, unless they meet a narrow exception for first-generation low-income students.
It was almost exclusively limited to black, Native American and Pacific Islander students,
“The McNair Program’s race-based provisions are unconstitutional, should not and will not be enforced, and are subject to a planned forthcoming regulatory change to rescind the race-based criteria,” said YAF’s lawyers this Tuesday in their motion to dismiss, with which the Education Department agreed to by not objecting.
U.S. Department of Education spokeswoman Ellen Keast committed to the changes in a statement to Fox News: “Consistent with the Department of Justice opinion, the Department of Education has agreed not to implement the racially discriminatory aspects of the McNair program, and we plan to make corresponding changes to our regulations.”
As The College Fix notes, “The lawsuit was filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty on behalf of Young America’s Foundation and its members Benjamin Rothove, a University of Wisconsin-Madison student and reporter for The College Fix, and Avery Durfee, a University of North Dakota student.”
“For years, the McNair Program operated under federal rules that explicitly favored certain racial groups while excluding others–including students who were white, Asian, Middle Eastern, Jewish, and more–simply because of their skin color,” YAF said yesterday. “This is another victory for equal treatment under the law, and a reminder that Americans don’t have to accept unconstitutional discrimination just because it’s dressed up as ‘equity.’”
