
ACR Project Alerts Ohio AG Yost That State Schools Continue to Operate Illegal, Race-Based Scholarships
The ACR Project, through its Ohio co-counsel, Ben Flowers of Ashbrook Byrne Kresge Flowers, today alerted Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost that, despite A.G. Yost’s prior directives, a pair of Ohio’s public universities systematically violate the U.S. Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act through their administration of racially exclusive scholarships. You can see the related letter, below.
The Supreme Court confirmed in SFFA v. Harvard that schools may not racially discriminate, even in admissions. The implications for either public universities or those receiving federal funding administering race-based scholarships should be obvious. Wright State and Youngstown State are both. Nonetheless, Wright State administers at least 20 race-exclusive scholarships, while Youngstown State appears to administer more than 50.
Apparently to avoid Harvard’s implications, Wright State and Youngstown State purport to administer their race-exclusive scholarships through “supporting foundations.” They apparently hope to skirt federal law by arguing that their foundations are private and receive no federal money.
Flowers explained why this cannot save the discriminatory scholarships: “When state officials and private actors willfully engage in ‘joint activity’ that discriminates on the basis of race, they violate the Equal Protection Clause. We’ve documented joint action here for AG Yost and, based on our experience, strongly suspect far more such evidence lurks beneath the publicly available facts.”
ACR Project Executive Director Dan Morenoff went further: “Ohio law recognizes that captive foundations remain part of their schools. Even if it hadn’t, federal law can’t so easily be defeated by the legal fiction of corporate forms. Congress and the Constitution barred schools from racially discriminating and we’re confident that AG Yost (or the courts) will agree that bar covers Wright State and Youngstown State’s race-exclusive scholarship programs.”
If Wright State, Youngstown State, and their foundations do not stop discriminating on the basis of race, the ACR Project anticipates bringing the litigation necessary for the courts to do so.