The Tennessee Attorney General, Jonathan Skrmetti, together with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., has taken legal action against the U.S. Department of Education over what they perceive as a fundamentally flawed and unconstitutional federal program. The contested Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) program funnels federal funds specifically to colleges and universities with a 25% or greater Hispanic student population, ostensibly discriminating against institutions with diverse but differently composed student bodies.
"A federal grant system that openly discriminates against students based on ethnicity isn’t just wrong and un-American—it's unconstitutional," Skrmetti stated, drawing parallels with previous Supreme Court rulings that deemed racially discriminatory admissions standards unlawful; in his opinion, the HSI program suffers from the same legal affliction and, to address this, Tennessee, alongside SFFA, is challenging the legal standing of the HSI program's grant eligibility requirements, which they claim not only marginalizes other minority groups but even Hispanic students who choose to attend colleges that fall short of the federal quota.
As reported by the Tennessee Office of the Attorney General, the lawsuit highlights the situation of institutions like the University of Memphis, whose minority enrollment is 61% but is deemed ineligible for these significant federal grants due to the specific demographic distribution required by the HSI program. This presumptive barrier, according to the plaintiffs, alienates deserving students and establishments from crucial financial support based not on need or merit but on a problematic checkbox of ethnic composition.
Chief Justice John Roberts' sentiments from the case SFFA v. Harvard is being cited by the plaintiffs to reinforce their lawsuit: "the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race." In the same vein, the current complaint being lodged by the Tennessee AG and SFFA calls for the courts to recognize the divisive nature of the HSI program's criteria and to subsequently rule it unconstitutional, hoping to establish a more equitable system for distributing educational grants that does not favor or eliminate consideration based on racial makeup.
