Edward Blum writes for the Washington Free Beacon about his latest attack on racial preferences.
Imagine a high school senior anywhere in America with a 4.0 GPA, rigorous coursework, and an extensive record of volunteering and community service. He plans to attend a four-year university but, like millions of families, worries about how to afford it. He discovers a prestigious national scholarship fund offering mentoring, leadership training, and up to $5,000 in financial aid.
He meets every requirement except one: He is not Hispanic.
A similar story belongs to a law student with a 3.63 GPA entering his final year. He too satisfies all academic and financial criteria but is barred because he does not “identify as being of Hispanic Heritage.”
These young students and thousands of other qualified blacks, Asians, and whites are excluded from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s (HSF) flagship scholarship program because they are members of the wrong ethnicity.
This week, the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a federal lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia challenging this race-exclusive policy under the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which prohibits discrimination based on race. This program is not a simple charitable grant with no strings attached; it is, in legal terms, a contract, and race-based contracting has been illegal for more than 150 years.
Since 1975, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund has distributed more than $750 million to tens of thousands of students. Its mission to help Hispanic students succeed in higher education is laudable, but it is pursuing them unlawfully. HSF’s rules are unambiguous: The program is open only to those who “identify as being of Hispanic Heritage” and who are “at least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino.” Non-Hispanic applicants are categorically prohibited from even applying, regardless of their academic merit or financial need.
This discrimination was unlawful long before the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended racial classifications and preferences in college admissions. The justices emphasized that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” That principle applies here. Private organizations cannot deny valuable contractual opportunities to entire racial or ethnic groups.
