BUZZ
State gave $440,433 to ‘Black American, American Indian, Hispanic‘ students in 2023-2024 academic year
The Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a state-funded scholarship program Thursday that awarded financial aid to college students based on certain racial categories — a decision that drew praise from conservative legal groups.
Dan Lennington, an attorney at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, which represented taxpayers in the case, celebrated the ruling as a “major win.”
“Wisconsin Supreme Court holds that [Gov. Tony] Evers Admin cannot offer scholarships based on race. This is a huge win for equality & provides a ROADMAP for Wisconsin Taxpayers to challenge many other programs worth BILLIONS,” he wrote on X.
Sarah Parshall Perry, an attorney and vice president of Defending Education, also praised the ruling in an X post Thursday.
“The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Perry wrote. “Wisconsin got the message. Their Supreme Court just ruled the governor cannot administer scholarship opportunities based on race.”
The case challenged the Wisconsin Minority Undergraduate Retention Grant Program, which offers “taxpayer-funded grants of up to $2,500 per academic year to eligible students who are Black American, American Indian, Hispanic or from certain Southeast Asian backgrounds,” The Heartland Post reports.
The program doled out $440,433 to 770 students in the 2023-2024 academic year, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.
“At the heart of the Equal Protection Clause is the principle that race-, national origin-, ancestry-, or alienage-based discrimination is unconstitutional except in the most extraordinary instances,” the ruling stated.
“The Constitution requires that every person ‘must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,’” the court ruled.
The ruling repeatedly cited the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found that the Ivy League institution’s race-based admissions practices were discriminatory.
The Heartland Post reports more on the background of the case:
A group of taxpayers challenged the program as an illegal expenditure of public funds that discriminates against students not belonging to the specified groups. …
The grant program, enacted in 1985 and expanded in 1987, limited eligibility to specific groups to promote retention and graduation. The Supreme Court rejected arguments that the grants served compelling interests in equalizing opportunities or improving retention for groups with higher attrition rates. It found insufficient evidence in the legislative record demonstrating disproportionate dropout rates at private and technical colleges specifically tied to race in a way that justified racial classifications.
“Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,” the Court concluded.
However, the liberal justices on the court emphasized their reluctant agreement with the ruling, pointing to their duty to follow U.S. Supreme Court precedent, according to Wisconsin Public Radio:
Chief Justice Jill Karofsky said she wanted to write separately to recognize the racial disparities in Wisconsin with respect to education, housing, employment, criminal justice and health care.
“Despite this longstanding commitment to education, Wisconsin still grapples with segregated and unequal educational opportunities,” Karofsky wrote.
“Clearly many students of color in Wisconsin leave high school and enter college with distinct disadvantages. That disparity is not about statistics or mere correlation.”
“Rather, that disparity is about a reality where past state-sponsored racism continues to affect educational opportunities, and systemic racism continues to rob non-White people of equal educational opportunities,” Karofsky continued.
MORE: No-whites-allowed Illinois scholarship program for future professors under fire
