ACR Project Files Title VI Complaint Against Weber State University

The Supreme Court handed down its Harvard opinion almost 2 years ago. In January 2024, Utah banned state institutions from “promot[ing] differential treatment in hiring, admissions or program participation based on ‘personal identity characteristics.'” These steps proceeded President Trump’s re-commitment of the federal government to enforcing nondiscrimination laws fairly in the service of color-blind meritocracy.

So why is Weber State University–a Utah public school–bragging of its continued efforts to pursue proxy discrimination? After all, that’s what it is to intentionally use nominally race-neutral means to pursue a prescribed racial balance for a student body.

Two possible answers present themselves. Maybe these are true-believing academic administrators engaged in massive resistance.  Maybe they’re green-eye-shaded functionaries following the incentives Congress continues to provide through the Minority Serving Institutions programs. Maybe even a bit of both.

Whatever the explanation, we’ve filed an administrative complaint with DOJ and the U.S. Department of Education.  You can read it, below.  Because a university whose president brags that his school is “not shy about continuing to pursue the goal” of obtaining a particular racial balance certainly sounds like it is intentionally discriminating in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI (not to mention state law).

The Departments face a target rich environment.  Weber State’s brazenly public doubling-down on facially illegal conduct should still win it a spot on the federal dance-card.