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Eleven Discriminatory Scholarships at Grand Valley State U Challenged by Equal Protection Project

Eleven Discriminatory Scholarships at Grand Valley State U Challenged by Equal Protection Project

“If there is a lack of representation, a lack of diversity, there are many lawful ways that the school can go about increasing diversity and increasing access. But what they can’t do is achieve that goal through racial discrimination.”

The Equal Protection Project (EPP) (EqualProtect.org) of the Legal Insurrection Foundation has challenged numerous discriminatory programs done in the name of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. In all we have filed over 50 complaints and legal actions since launch in February 2023, with approximately half the schools withdrawing or modifying the discriminatory programs after our filing. (See EPP November 2024 Impact Report.)

Almost all of our actions have addressed discrimination in higher education. In our latest action, we have filed a Civil Rights Complaint (full embed at bottom of post) with the Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education, against Grand Valley State University (GVSU) in Michigan for 11 scholarships that discriminate on the basis of race, color, and/or national origin.

From the Complaint:

We bring this civil rights complaint against Grand Valley State University (“GVSU”), a public institution, for illegal race-based discrimination in violation of Title VI. Specifically, GVSU offers, administers, and promotes eleven (11) scholarships that discriminate based on race, color, and/or national origin.

These scholarships are listed, promoted, and administered through the GVSU myScholarships system.2 According to the GVSU website, applicants access this system by logging in and providing their records and information to determine scholarship eligibility. By doing so, students grant GVSU complete access to match them with potential scholarships. [image omitted]

The scholarships listed below are currently offered to GVSU students and applicants for admission, according to the GVSU website, and violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”) and its implementing regulations3 by illegally discriminating against students based on their race, color, and/or national origin. Because GVSU is a public university, these discriminatory scholarships also violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.Each of the scholarships listed below are available for the 2025-2026 school year with the application period currently open, according to the GVSU website, and some are renewable annually.4

We then go on to list each scholarship at issue, here’s a sample:

We then went on to explain why these scholarships violated the law, as well as GVSU’s own non-discrimination policies.

The filing has been picked up widely in western Michigan. WOOD NBC 8 interviewed me:

A federal civil rights complaint filed this week against Grand Valley State University alleges some of the school’s scholarships discriminate on the basis of race.

The Equal Protection Project filed the complaint with the U.S. Department of Education after it received a tip about the school’s practices. The EPP alleges GVSU is violating Title IV of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

“The Johnny Burton Memorial Scholarship is only open to African Americans,” said William Jacobson, founder of the EPP. “You could not have a more clear racial standard. There is the Steelcase scholarship, which is only open to persons of color. There are other scholarships that require you to be minority and define minority as essentially non-white.”

The 11 scholarships highlighted in the complaint all have eligibility requirements that have to deal with a student’s race or minority classification.

While Jacobson said many institutions like GVSU are trying to do right after decades of discrimination, the EPP doesn’t believe further discrimination or racial profiling rectifies history.

“There are problems in society. There have been in the past. Nobody is denying that. But the answer to those problems is not to amplify discrimination and not to amplify racism,” he said. ”That does not prevent you from taking an individual’s experience with race or experience with racism into account. But you cannot engage in negative stereotypes and you cannot say just because someone has a certain skin color that they are presumed to need the extra help. They are presumed to not be on a level playing field. You need to judge each student on their own and that’s what we hope will happen.”

ABC13 also covered the story:

The EPP’s allegations stem from scholarships offered through GVSU to students of certain race, color, ethnic and minority identities.

“We have identified 11 scholarships at Grand Valley State that have eligibility requirements that we believe violate the law because they’re based on either race, color or ethnicity,” Jacobson said….

Jacobson is also the founder of the project’s parent organization, the Legal Insurrection Foundation.

On its website, the LIF says it fights what it characterizes on its website are the “threats” of critical race theory, diversity equity and inclusion, and a racially discriminatory equity agenda, among other things.

When it comes to diversity, Jacobson believes the requirements of these scholarships are not the answer.

“If there is a lack of representation, a lack of diversity, there are many lawful ways that the school can go about increasing diversity and increasing access,” Jacobson said. “But what they can’t do is achieve that goal through racial discrimination.”

Additional coverage was provided by CBS News Channel 3:

In all, by using race, color and/or national origin as qualifications for the scholarships, the university violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, Equal Protection Project officials said.

For EPP Founder William A. Jacobson, the language in GVSU’s scholarships discourage White students from applying for them.

“We believe that saying scholarships only open to Blacks and other non-Whites is about as discriminatory as you can get,” Jacobson said. “If there were any doubt, if they had a scholarship that said, ‘we’re only open to Whites,’ there’d be an absolute uproar, and there should be.”

Jacobson told News Channel 3 he hopes Grand Valley State University will open the scholarships to all students interested in applying, regardless of race, color or nation of origin, as a result.

“We don’t want the scholarships to go away,” Jacobson said. “We want students to get money for it and to advance their education, but the university has to do that in a lawful, race-neutral way. That’s our goal.”

Reminder: we are a small organization going up against powerful and wealthy government and private institutions devoted to DEI discrimination. Donations are greatly needed and appreciated.

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Comments

Good for them, no reason elven students should be getting scholarships not available to a different, more deserving minority, like us dwarves…..

To me, the big red flag is that a couple of the listed scholarships are restricted to first generation students who are also minority students. At most universities, being first generation is a sufficient condition for awarding scholarships.

Another troubling inconsistency in the listings is that one scholarship explicitly includes minority or multiracial students. Does that imply that when the University matches students to the other scholarships, they exclude multiracial students from consideration?

Since Civil Rights laws were enacted, some twenty *Trillion* dollars have been spent on blacks and some other minorities to bring them up to speed. I think what we see now is what we get and we should just accept that.

There should be some hope that the second Trump administration will direct federal civil rights agencies and the department of education (should it not be abolished) to cut off all federal funds to institutions that maintain programs that are restricted to require membership in any protected class.

Clearly, if government money is funding the scholarships, anti-discrimination rules must apply. What happens in the case of privately-funded scholarships? If I, for instance, want to establish a scholarship to increase the number of female veterinarians, and limit my largess to females, what I do with my money is my business and there would seem to be no legitimate objection to my limiting my scholarships to females.

Does the fact that the educational institution (whose general administrative costs are funded by government money) helps administer the scholarship import Constitutional restrictions on how the scholarship is awarded? If so, can the educational institution publicize the scholarship (but not administer it) to avoid importing the Constitutional equal protection requirements on how I spend my money? And if so, where is the bright line that the educational institution must not cross if I am to be able to limit who gets my scholarship?