*A legal scholar argues that the eligibility criteria for the George Floyd Scholarship discriminate based on race.
According to The College Fix, a legal watchdog alleges that North Central University’s George Floyd Memorial Scholarship violates federal civil rights law by exclusively targeting black students.
The private Christian university established the scholarship in June 2020. According to the information page, it is open to students who are “Black or African American, that is, a person having origins in any of the black racial groups of Africa.”
The Equal Protection Project of the Legal Insurrection Foundation filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights after claiming the Michigan-based university “engages in invidious discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin,” through the scholarship.
The College Fix reports that the complaint claims a breach of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which forbids educational institutions from engaging in racial discrimination.
“The George Floyd Scholarship eligibility requirements are openly racially discriminatory,” Equal Protection founder William Jacobson told The College Fix. “Regardless of the purpose of the racial discrimination, it is wrong and unlawful.”
“NCU needs to come up with a remedial plan to compensate students shut out of the George Floyd Scholarship due to discrimination,” Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor, stated.
Per The Fix, the Equal Protection Project also accuses the university of “violating the state’s Human Rights Act … which makes it a criminal offense for an educational institution to limit access to any educational program on the basis of race,” the legal filing states.
“After the Supreme Court’s decision in [Students For Fair Admissions], it is clear that discriminating on the basis of race to achieve diversity is not lawful,” Jacobson told The Fix. “As Chief Justice Roberts wrote in the majority opinion, ‘[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
A white police officer killed George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, and his death has sparked a national reckoning about race and policing in the United States.
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