Grants for Latino-serving colleges called unconstitutional

Trump administration sides with lawsuit that strikes down funding assisting minorities.

- By CoLuin BINKLEY AND JOCELYN GECKER

SALEM STATE UNIVERSITY is among the nation's colleges with a large Latino population.

The Trump administration said Friday it will not defend a decades-old grant program for colleges with large numbers of Latino students that is being challenged in court, declaring the government believes the funding is unconstitutional.

In a memo sent to Congress, the Justice Department said it agrees with a lawsuit attempting to strike down grants that are reserved for colleges and universities where at least a quarter of undergraduates are Latino. Congress created the program in 1998 after finding Latino students were going to college and graduating at far lower rates than white students.

Justice Department officials argued the program provides an unconstitutional advantage based on race or ethnicity.

The state of Tennessee and an anti-affirmative action organization sued the U.S. Education Department in June, asking a judge to halt the Hispanic-Serving Institution program. Tennessee argued all of its public universities serve Latino students but none meets the “arbitrary ethnic threshold” to be eligible for the grants. Those schools miss out on tens of millions of dollars because of discriminatory requirements, the suit said.

On Friday, the Justice Department released a letter in which Solicitor General John Sauer notified Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson that the department “has decided not to defend” the program, saying certain aspects of it are unconstitutional. The letter, dated July 25, cited a 2023 Supreme Court decision that said “outright racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.