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Teens of Color Advisory Board openly prefers non-white LGBTQ members
The University of Maryland’s LGBTQ research lab is facing a legal complaint over its alleged use of race in selecting participants for its Teens of Color Advisory Board and Research Assistant Program while receiving federal funding.
The Equal Protection Project submitted the civil rights complaint to the Department of Health and Human Services, targeting UMD’s Lavender Lab.
“As the complaint explains, HHS investigation is warranted because the Lavender Lab uses race, color, and/or national origin in connection with certain programs and opportunities related to its federally funded research,” the EPP stated in a case overview.
The complaint flags the lab’s “LGBTQ+ Teens of Color Advisory Board” and its Research Assistant Program, urging review under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act.
It also notes that one of the lab’s projects, titled “Long-Term and Daily Associations Among Intersectional Minority Stress, Structural Oppression, and Alcohol Use and Misuse Among Sexual Minority Adolescents of Color,” is funded by a federal grant worth approximately $3.6 million. The project will run through April 30, 2027.
The lab studies the “determinants of suicide, substance use, and other health outcomes for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) individuals and Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC),” according to its webpage.
EPP Founder William Jacobson told The College Fix, “The Lavender Lab does not even try to hide the race-based nature of the programs we have challenged.”
The lab hosts a “Teens of Color Advisory Board,” which openly prefers non-white teens who identify as LGBTQ, he said.
“Such racial preferences and requirements must have a compelling state interest to be justified, and there is no such compelling state interest here,” Jacobson said.
“Efforts to promote diversity are not compelling state interests under clear law, including the Supreme Court’s decision in the Harvard affirmative action case,” he said.
Echoing Jacobson, Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Andrew Quinio told The College Fix that the lab’s race-based selection process is not only “unconstitutional,” but also “immoral and demeaning.”
Quinio described the case against UMD as “an important and necessary step toward eliminating discrimination.”
He cited a Supreme Court ruling which decided, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
Quinio also said this is a common problem among higher education systems throughout the U.S.
Other universities have been called to court by the Department of Justice over their “racially discriminatory admissions policies,” he said.
“Universities have long lamented their inability to craft their campuses based on race and have consistently pushed the legal envelope to do what they are prohibited from doing,” the attorney said.
He added that the Constitution does not allow public universities to hide behind the pretense of public health to justify discrimination.
The College Fix reached out to UMD and the Lavender Lab via multiple emails for their responses to the complaint. Neither responded.
This isn’t the first time UMD has faced scrutiny for its focus on race and gender.
Earlier this year, physicians raised concerns over new course offerings that incorporate identity politics into various public health and medical programs at the public institution, The College Fix previously reported.
“Decolonizing Medicine: Steps to Actionable Change” is a one-credit undergraduate public health course that covers how “colonial legacies” impact “global health systems” and the “concept of ‘the White body’” as the standard in medical training, according to the university registrar’s catalog.
Last year, the university opened a “Black & Indigenous environmental art gallery,” aiming to support students’ “climate anxiety” and other “stresses” of studying “environmental injustice and environmental racism.”
