“The State of New York has raised the white flag of surrender in our lawsuit, but not high enough”
New Guidance from the NY Dept. of Education removes mandatory race discrimination in the NY STEP Act, but still permits it: “Word games are not acceptable. The state must do away with the racially discriminatory eligibility requirements completely and permanently, or we will ask the court to order it.”
You may recall the lawsuit commenced by our Equal Protection Project, together with Pacific Legal Foundation, challenging the New York Science Technology Entry Program (STEP) Act, which provides state funding to 56 colleges and universities to provide STEM programming to middle- and high school students.
The program is huge, enrolling almost 11,000 middle and high school students yearly, with another 6,000 college students under a separate progam (C-STEP). It’s a great program, with one big problem – It discriminates on the basis of race and ethnicity. Students who are black, hispanic, or Native American are automatically eligible, while other students (i.e. white and asian) must show family economic hardship. The details of the initial Complaint (which has since been Amended) are set for in our first post about the lawsuit. Asian Parents Sue NY State Over Discriminatory Student Programs, With Help From Equal Protection Project/
The lawsuit survived a motion to dismiss the Amended Complaint, as detailed in Asian Parents Lawsuit Challenging Discriminatory NY STEP Program Can Go Forward, Court Rules.
The lawsuit has continued, with the State demanding information about the plaintiff parents and children. That’s all a side show, since the STEP Program eligibility requirements are clearly unlawful. The discovery period should wind down by the fall, at which point both sides will seek summary judgment – that is, a ruling that based upon the undisputed material facts, that side is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.
The State seems to recognise it is likely to lose, particularly since the court affirmed our legal theory in denying the motion to dismiss.
So the State preemtively issued new Guidance on July 8, 2025, that purports to eliminate the mandatory descrimination in the program but leave schools the option to discriminate. The new Guidance provides, in part:
As many of you are aware, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) is currently engaged in active litigation concerning the eligibility criteria for participation in the Science and Technology Entry Program (STEP). The litigation challenges certain aspects of our longstanding eligibility guidelines related to student race and ethnicity.
While NYSED remains committed to defending the STEP and CSTEP programs and their historic mission to increase access and opportunity for historically underrepresented students in the scientific, technical, and health-related professions, we recognize the need to provide clarity and support to the field during this period of legal uncertainty.
Updated Guidance on STEP and CSTEP Student Eligibility
Effective immediately and until further notice, STEP and CSTEP grantees may determine student eligibility without regard to historically underrepresented minority status, race, or ethnicity. Instead, grantees are encouraged to base eligibility decisions solely on indicators of economic disadvantage, in alignment with applicable state and federal guidelines.
Implications for Current STEP/CSTEP Programs
• Recruitment, selection, and enrollment of new students may proceed using economic-based eligibility criteria only.
• Collection or use of race, ethnicity, or minority status data is not required for eligibility purposes. However, data reporting should continue in a disaggregated format, in accordance with Board of Regents policy.
• Current program participants remain eligible, and services to these students should continue without disruption.
The Guidance also promises to continue to fight the lawsuit:
NYSED will continue to vigorously defend the mission and intent of STEP and CSTEP in court. We are also evaluating our policies and procedures in light of recent legal developments to ensure continued compliance and sustainability.
We will keep you informed of any changes to program guidance as the litigation progresses. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to your NYSED program officers.
I expect the State will try to use the new Guidance in its defense in the lawsuit. But it’s clearly pretextual and most important, it does not eliminate the discrimination, it simply says that schools “may” choose not to discriminate.
Not good enough, as explained by me and a lawyer from Pacific Legal in a NY Post article covering the new Guidance (emphasis added):
A federal lawsuit filed in January [2024] accused New York of engaging in blatant discrimination against Asian and white students under the program.
“Progress!” crowed Yiatin Chu — a co-founder of the Asian Wave alliance who said her daughter was one of the students discriminated against because of the race-based policy — to The Post.
A top state education official, noting the still-pending litigation over the program, has already urged directors and administrators of STEP and CSTEP to stop using race or “historically underrepresented minority status” to determine admissions and instead use only family income as admission criteria.,,,
The lawyers for the opposing Asian parents said state officials capitulated because they know the race-based policy is illegal. But the parents’ reps complained that state officials still left wiggle room to continue discriminating against students by using words such as “may” and “encouraged.”
“The state of New York has raised the white flag of surrender in our lawsuit, but not high enough,” said William Jacobson, founder of EqualProtect.org.
“Word games are not acceptable,” Jacobson said. “The state must do away with the racially discriminatory eligibility requirements completely and permanently, or we will ask the court to order it.”
A federal lawsuit filed in January accused New York of engaging in blatant discrimination against Asian and white students under the program.
Erin Wilcox, a senior lawyer at Pacific Legal Foundation, said, “The state should be requiring all schools to stop this illegal discrimination immediately, not giving them the option to continue.”
We are determined to see the case through to the end, and not to allow the State to play word games that permit the colleges and universities receiving STEP (and C-STEP) grants to discriminate as to which students are permitted into the program.
It’s crazy that the State is defending this.
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Comments
It is a solid 100% bet that the state will still discriminate against Asians. The Communist satraps who run New York view racial bigotry as not only permissible but morally mandatory.
Some Asians – certainly not all! – made the grave error of being academically successful. This blows a hole in the Communists’ wackadoodle belief that society is hopelessly mired in “systemic racism”. But the only systemic racism today is Affirmative Action and DIE- both of which are Communist creations.
Great news, Prof J.
” … increase access and opportunity for historically underrepresented students in the scientific, technical, and health-related professions,”
They mean low-IQ students who will have trouble with a demanding curriculum. Example: Harvey Mudd College.
Harvey Mudd College has enjoyed a stellar reputation as a top engineering school. Then some years ago the HM administration decided the college needed to become more “diverse,” which in reality means reducing the number of white men irregardless of qualifications of those who replace them. Here are the racial demographics according to Harvey Mudd itself. Whites went from 58% of the student body in 2010 to 35% in 2016. Women went from 31.0% in 2005 to 46.2% in 2016. I don’t know the current statistics. How has this drastic demographic transition worked out? The women and blacks can’t handle the curriculum, even the one HM dumbed down some years ago. According to the Business Insider, HM finds itself beset by racial tension, with students making the usual demands.
The solution is to find out why ! Women and Black people aren’t inherently any less intelligent than (say) Asian students. What are the *reasons* they are less inclined to study engineering.
Diversity rigging is just a lazy cop out.
Actually discovering why may involve facing a few home truths they don’t want to hear.
How do you know? On average (and we are talking about averages) it isn’t true. There are other reasons, but that’s definitely one of them.
I am interested in the data you used to conclude that the IQ curve for various groups is identical.
You are right. Their inherent intelligence is equal. It’s just that they are too lazy to study because they are so damn stupid.
New York’s solution is to make society equally so. How inclusive.
You seem to assume that interest in engineering, for example, is strictly a function of intelligence. That’s simply not true. We know from decades of psychological studies that women are more interested in people than things, whereas men are more interested in things than people. At the extremes you get a predominance of male engineers and female nurses. From the same studies we know the results reject social constructionist theory, because as choice of professions opens up, the sex differences increase—that is, we might get a few more female engineers but we get a lot more female nurses. So while intelligence plays a part, personal preferences play a larger part, and those personal preferences are markedly different between the sexes.
If IQ measures intelligence, then (American) blacks are less intelligent with an average IQ of 85. That’s one standard deviation from the average (100) for American white men. The IQ story for women is more complicated. The data we have indicates that white women have an average IQ 3 to 4 points below white men. That doesn’t like like a lot, but at the high end it makes a big difference. Let’s look at the ratio of number of white men (per one million) with IQ greater than 160. The answer is 31.67. The corresponding number for white women is 9.92, and the ratio is 3.19. I used 96 as the average for women, and the same SD. There is some evidence that female IQ is less dispersed, but I don’t think that had been settled the last time I looked. So at the extreme high end, men outnumber women by a factor of more than three. I used the standard assumption of the normal distribution (Bell Curve). The use of the normal distribution is correct as the raw data is transformed to make it normal. Strictly speaking IQ scores are really ordinal data as there is no natural zero. The reference group used to be 15 year old British boys. I don’t know if that’s still the case.
well many believe that black people are superior in physicality and no one (as long as they are black) gets fired for saying that
so while their is much subjectivity to that
there is none when it comes to intelligence UNLESSSSS the scoring of tests or grades are then inflated ( like they are) to boost the non whites academic scores
THATS NOT AN OPINION
that is a well know publicly stated rule/agenda broadcast by no less than the slavemasters themselves…the dems
they cant and wont ever really have the ability to do the job..they’ll just have the credentials
they will fly planes into the ground and build bridges that will collapse like the fjb piers
Speaking of flight, please search for DEI results in the Time article titled: Black Pilot in Amazon Cargo Plane Crash Repeatedly Flunked Flight Tests | Time
His family is suing and rightfully so as their virtue signal killed all onboard.
They stopped short of providing any formal conclusions of the cause, but raised issues with pilot hiring practices and the availability of previous records of failures.
the government too afraid to tell the truth?
BTW,, on youtube there is a documentary on july 26 2025 on this subject,,according to the webpage
It’s pure laziness.
If you have a racial shortfall, say in Black people becoming Police Officers, the solution is to find out *why* and fix that.
Relying on simple answers “racism” or cop outs “fiddle the entrance rules” is just a lazy buffoon not solving the problem.
It also has the side effect that if a Black officer qualified on merit people will sometimes wonder if he got in because of his race, especially if he makes a mistake (as people do)
You may not be able to fix it, since it might be something inherent in the population. But even if it turns out to be something you can fix, why should you? So long as you’re getting enough recruits, of good quality, what difference does it make what the racial makeup of the total force happens to be?
The problem, paulscott, is that you think there’s such a thing as a ‘racial shortfall’.
There are no legal barriers to people of any race doing any thing, so what you’re wanting is to control peoples choices to get your preferred racial makeup.
“find out why”
lol
nice way to delay the truth while “searching”
go ahead you search
This seems like a pretty straightforward violation of the Civil Rights Act(s) and 14A. The Trump admin should halt federal education funds for the State of NY until they stop their illegal and unconstitutional racial discrimination. Force NY to figure out how to defend their actions while facing funding shortfalls. Given the new optional language I’d issue a Statewide halt to education funding then require each school district, higher ed institution to recertify they don’t use race to discriminate. Those which offer good faith proof can have funding restored. Any official who sends in a certification later shown to be false in order to obtain funds for their district/institution should be prosecuted and the district/Institution should lose federal funds for at least one year without exception. Until there are stiff mandatory penalties including prison and loss of funds the school administration, the school boards and the voters of the school districts/States along with State Legislatures won’t take it seriously. They’ll hem and haw, use dissembling language and excuses ‘what about the children’ to avoid accountability and consequences.
“… Effective immediately and until further notice, STEP and CSTEP grantees may determine student eligibility without regard to historically underrepresented minority status, race, or ethnicity. Instead, grantees are encouraged to base eligibility decisions….”
As written, this doesn’t raise a white flag at all. “Grantees” are the people ~receiving~ the grants, not the ones issuing them. Whether the wording is by intent or due to ignorance of English, it changes exactly nothing since the grantees’ only power here is to request the grant, not to make it.
My understanding is that the “grantee” in this context is the intermediary between the state and the student, I.e., the school or institution.
In that respect, they (schools, institutions) receive funds from the state and disperse them to students.
That doesn’t change the particulars of the arguments that people here are making…
Perhaps the state feels guilty about the disastrous effect of the government K-12 schools in big cities – mostly on low income blacks – and is trying to compensate for it by discriminating against whites and asians in higher ed.
It would be better to get the government out of the business of running schools. But that would cut off financial support from the teachers’ unions to the Democrats who run the state.
Recruitment, selection, and enrollment of new students may proceed using economic-based eligibility criteria only.
I’m not seeing how this allows individual schools to keep their racial criteria.
Because, as Professor Jacobson points out in the article, the term “may,” is not definitive, and if it takes a court to order such definitive language, then so be it….
My oh my. Re who’s interested in what, and why certain groups are more represented in certain fields than others…
Long ago, when the Cold War was still a thing, and feminists were demanding a larger female presence in the US Armed Forces, a liberal lady very near and dear to me mentioned how she thought her daughter should join the Army after high school.
My inner bad boy awakened. “You know,” I said, “I hear that in Soviet POW camps, the guards aren’t nice Jewish boys or blonde Estonians, but Uzbeks, Tatars, Mongols, and the like…”
So much for liberal anti-racism. I like to think I had a role in creating a female physicist.