The Future of Race-Based Scholarships in Higher Education
It’s now been three years since the United States Supreme Court declared that race may never be used as a “negative” or operate as a “stereotype” in higher education. While that landmark case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, dismantled affirmative action in admissions, race still lingers as a factor in many other areas of higher education.
One such area is financial aid—specifically grants and scholarships. The National Scholarship Providers Association estimates that 11% of all higher-education scholarships still contain eligibility requirements for race, ethnicity, or other demographic factors, even after SFFA.
Race-based scholarships, though, are facing increasing scrutiny. Last month, the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down a race-based scholarship created by the Wisconsin Legislature in 1985. The scholarship provided taxpayer-funded grants to students based on need. Critically, however, the scholarships were available only for “minority undergraduates.” And even that definition further restricted eligibility by providing that only certain minorities qualified: blacks, American Indians, Hispanics, and Asians from Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia. All other students were excluded because of their race.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the State on behalf of Kiki Rabiebna and Richard Freihoefer, a married couple. Kiki is a native of Thailand and Richard is a white American. They have a teenage son who is entering college in Wisconsin this fall. But because of race and ancestry, no one in the Rabiebna-Freihoefer family was eligible for the scholarship. The left-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with WILL and its clients, unanimously holding that the scholarship’s racial qualifications violated the 14th Amendment.
The left-leaning Wisconsin Supreme Court sided with WILL and its clients, unanimously holding that the scholarship’s racial qualifications violated the 14th Amendment. In the Court’s main opinion, Justice Ziegler explained that the Constitution requires “all individuals to be treated equally without regard to one’s race, ancestry, origin, or ethnicity.” And each citizen must be treated “as an individual—not as one member of a class.”
