The Department of Education announced Wednesday it will halt $350 million in grants to hundreds of colleges that serve minority students, arguing the longtime programs are discriminatory. The department said it will stop funding eight grant programs that support Black, Native, Hispanic and Asian American college students nationwide and reallocate that money to new priorities.
However, about $132 million will still go to four of the grant programs because of congressional mandates. The Trump administration said only that money must be disbursed.
“Discrimination based upon race or ethnicity has no place in the United States,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “The department looks forward to working with Congress to re-envision these programs to support institutions that serve underprepared or under-resourced students, without relying on race quotas and will continue fighting to ensure that students are judged as individuals, not prejudged by their membership of a racial group.”
Background
The move comes after the Department of Justice declined to defend the constitutionality of an initiative that assists colleges where at at least 25% of undergraduates are Hispanic.
The state of Tennessee and a conservative nonprofit group, Students for Fair Admissions, eventually prevailed in a lawsuit challenging the initiative. The plaintiffs sought an end to the program, arguing it was discriminatory by denying federal funding to colleges that didn’t meet the 25% requirement.
In July, United States Solicitor General D. John Sauer said the Trump administration would not defend the case, claiming the program violated “the equal-protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.”
“The Supreme Court has explained that outright racial discrimination balancing is patently unconstitutional,” he said, referring to a 2023 decision that prohibits race-based admissions. “Its precedents make clear that the government lacks any legitimate interest in differentiating among universities based on whether a specified number of seats in each class are occupied by individuals from the preferred ethnic groups.”
In its announcement on Wednesday, the Education Department endorsed the solicitor general’s argument and said all minority-focused college programs are unconstitutional.
Democrats criticize move
Critics of the decision argue that the department has no power to decide the constitutionality of such programs.
Amanda Fuchs Miller, who worked as deputy assistant secretary for higher education programs under former President Joe Biden, told The Washington Post that the Trump administration’s effort to halt grants is “contrary to statute and harmful to under-resourced schools who rely on this money to support all of their students.”
“Schools who are in the middle of their grant periods are being given less than a month to plan as their grants aren’t being continued,” she said. “And, just earlier this month [the Education Department] ran competitions for many of these programs, wasting time and resources for those who applied.”
Democratic lawmakers have expressed concern this would happen since Congress passed a government funding bill earlier this year. They said the bill lacked specifics on key educational initiatives, which gave the Trump administration more leverage to decide which programs are funded.
“Ripping away these resources at the tail end of the fiscal year is yet another example of how President Trump is putting politics ahead of students,” Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., said in a statement.
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