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Key Takeaways
- The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against the Rhode Island Department of Education and Providence Public School District for allegedly discriminating against white teachers in a student loan forgiveness program.
- The program offers up to $25,000 in loan forgiveness for teachers who identify as 'Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial.'
- The case comes after a legal organization founded by Cornell Law Professor William Jacobson filed a civil rights complaint against the program in 2022.
The U.S. Department of Justice recently filed a lawsuit against the Rhode Island Department of Education and Providence Public School District over a student loan forgiveness program that limits eligibility based on race.
The lawsuit, which was filed in September, alleges “only white teachers are excluded” from the program “based on their race in violation of federal law.”
William Jacobson, a law professor at Cornell University, welcomed the news in an interview with The College Fix, calling the program “plainly racist.”
The Equal Protection Project, a legal nonprofit that Jacobson founded to support “the fair treatment of all persons without regard to race or ethnicity,” filed a civil rights complaint about the program back in 2022, he said in a recent email.
Jacobson said he was “thrilled that the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit in federal court for race, color, and national origin discrimination at the Providence Public School District (PPSD).”
He told The Fix that the program is “plainly racist,” and he doesn’t see “any legal defense the school district and State have” to support it.
The “Educators of Color Loan Forgiveness Program” offers up to $25,000 in student loan forgiveness for teachers who complete at least three years at the district, a no longer available webpage on the Providence school district’s website states.
The program requires applicants to be a full-time teacher with a minimum of $5,000 in student loans. Candidates also need to identify as “Asian, Black, Indigenous, Latino, biracial, or multi-racial,” according to the webpage.
The program, which started in 2021, is a joint effort between the school district, education department, and the Rhode Island Foundation, according to the lawsuit. The foundation funds the program, and the district reviews and accepts applicants. Approved applicants are then sent to the foundation, which coordinates their loan repayments.
The goal of the loan forgiveness program is to incentivize “teachers of color” to accept jobs in the school district, but it also “obliges PPSD to ‘recruit and retain up to 127 teachers of color’” for five years, according to a news release from the Justice Department.
The lawsuit alleges that the school district and Rhode Island education department have been engaging in “a pattern and practice” of discrimination against white teachers for years through the program. It claims the program violates the federal Civil Rights Act, which prohibits employer discrimination based on race.
“This is race discrimination in public employment, pure and simple,” the lawsuit claims.
In the lawsuit, the department asks a federal court to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the further implementation of similar race-based programs, and provide relief to new non-minority teachers in the district.
The Justice Department declined to comment “beyond the press release” when contacted by The College Fix last week.
In the release, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stated, “While assisting new teachers in paying off their student loans may be a worthy cause, such a benefit of employment simply cannot be granted or withheld on the basis of the teachers’ race.”
The College Fix also contacted the Providence school district and Rhode Island education department for comments regarding the case, and was directed to district spokesperson Suzanne Ouellette. As of Sept. 29, Ouellette said their officials had not been served or informed that federal representatives would proceed with a lawsuit.
Because of the “active litigation, PPSD and RIDE will not be commenting further,” Ouellette told The Fix.
Meanwhile, the lawsuit drew a strong reaction from civil rights attorney Edward Blum.
“Students for Fair Admissions applauds the DOJ’s legal challenge to this race-exclusive program,” Blum told The Fix in a recent email when asked about the case. “Someone’s race should never be a factor in how public resources are made available.”
Blum is the founder of Students For Fair Admissions, the nonprofit that litigated the case against race-based admission practices at Harvard University to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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