Minnesota Department Of Health Buckles To DOJ, Voluntarily Cuts Race-Based Grant

Minnesota Department Of Health Buckles To DOJ, Voluntarily Cuts Race-Based Grant

The Department of Justice has concluded a compliance review of the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) after the state elected to voluntarily end a discriminatory grant program. The DOJ found that the MDH’s “Capacity Strengthening Initiative” violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it “used race, color, and national origin to determine which applicants received funding.”

Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division reiterated the department’s determination to root out discriminatory programs and applauded Minnesota’s willingness to comply.

“Recipients of federal dollars cannot decide who benefits from those funds on the basis of race, color, or national origin,” said Dhillon.

“The Department appreciates that the State of Minnesota has recognized this foundational principle and has repealed the statute governing the program.”

According to a 2023 grant profile from the third-party website The Grant Portal, the Capacity Strengthening Initiative in Minnesota was described as aiming to support and strengthen organizations serving “people of color.”

The DOJ noted that the program “ensured that grant funds were prioritized and awarded to organizations that were within counties that had a higher proportion of ‘Black or African American’ and ‘nonwhite Latino(a)’ communities.”

Discriminatory grant programs have become a focus of the Trump administration in recent months with the help of the Equal Protection Project.

The Department of Health and Human Services was tipped off by EPP to 3 HHS grant programs that would require recipients to implement discriminatory selection criteria.

“Through a review of publicly available databases, we have identified three (3) HHS grant programs that require recipients to implement discriminatory selection criteria… Based on publicly available information, these programs appear to be active,” read EPP’s Office of Civil Rights Complaint.

In response, the HHS opened an investigation into the programs on May 28 of this year.

“Although HHS has weeded out most of the discriminatory grant programs they had, we found three holdovers from the Biden administration,” said EPP founder William Jacobson.

“We are asking HHS to live up to the law and President Trump’s executive orders.”

As the federal government continues its efforts to eliminate discriminatory Biden-era grant programs on the basis of race, continued vigilance is necessary to ensure that such programs do not reemerge in the future.

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